Research: Indiscriminate Surveillance Fosters Distrust, Conformity and Mediocrity

[Hissyspit]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/26/indiscriminate-surveillance-fosters-distrust-conformity-and-mediocrity-research

Indiscriminate surveillance fosters distrust, conformity and mediocrity: research

By Chris Chambers, The Guardian
Monday, August 26, 2013 7:27 EDT

Recent disclosures about the scope of government surveillance are staggering. We now know that the UK’s Tempora program records huge volumes of private communications, including – as standard – our emails, social networking activity, internet histories, and telephone calls. Much of this data is then shared with the US National Security Agency, which operates its own (formerly) clandestine surveillance operation. Similar programs are believed to operate in Russia, China, India, and throughout several European countries. While pundits have argued vigorously about the merits and drawbacks of such programs, the voice of science has remained relatively quiet. This is despite the fact that science, alone, can lay claim to a wealth of empirical evidence on the psychological effects of surveillance. Studying that evidence leads to a clear conclusion and a warning: indiscriminate intelligence-gathering presents a grave risk to our mental health, productivity, social cohesion, and ultimately our future.

Surveillance impairs mental health and performance

For more than 15 years we’ve known that surveillance leads to heightened levels of stress, fatigue and anxiety. In the workplace it also reduces performance and our sense of personal control. A government that engages in mass surveillance cannot claim to value the wellbeing or productivity of its citizens.

Surveillance promotes distrust between the public and the state

People will trust an authority to the extent that it is seen to behave in their interest and trust them in return. Research suggests that people tolerate limited surveillance provided they believe their security is being bought with someone else’s liberty. The moment it becomes clear that they are in fact trading their own liberty, the social contract is broken. Violating this trust changes the definition of “us” and “them” in a way that can be dangerous for a democratic authority – suddenly, most of the population stands in opposition to their own government.

MORE[p]

[villager]

1. It's successfully fostered all those things on this very website!

Alas.

[Hydra]

2. It's by design

They want to control the creativity and thinking of everyone. If it's not useful to them, they don't want it.

Evolutionarily speaking, this is going to kill us.

[uponit7771]

3. Yeap, bout time we define a need to know basis seeing the amount and breadth of data is that can be

...gathered is greater than when the 76 law was put in place

[Zorra]

4. Excellent. The philosopher Michel Foucault had a social theory known as "Panopticism":

A central idea of Foucault’s panopticism concerns the systematic ordering and controlling of human populations through subtle and often unseen forces. Such ordering is apparent in many parts of the modernized and now, increasingly digitalized, world of information. Contemporary advancements in technology and surveillance techniques have perhaps made Foucault’s theories more pertinent to any scrutiny of the relationship between the state and its population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticism

Foucault has some very interesting ideas about surveillance and power. He's a tough read, and even reading critiques of his work is a chore for me because it requires, for me at least, a lot of alternative thinking and word analysis. It may be that somewhere in or near Foucault's ideas we may find the key to unlocking the panopticon tower that controls our modern American surveillance state.

The turn to this concept of "government" allowed Foucault to include a new element to his understanding of power: freedom. "Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free" (221), Foucault explains. Conversely, "slavery is not a power relationship when man is in chains. (In this case it is a question of a physical relationship of constraint.)" (221). Indeed, recalcitrance thus becomes an integral part of the power relationship: "At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom" (221-22). Foucault thus provides us with a powerful model for thinking about how to fight oppression when one sees it: "the analysis, elaboration, and bringing into question of power relations and the 'agonism' between power relations and the intransitivity of freedom is a permanent political task inherent in all social existence"

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/newhistoricism/modules/foucaulthistory.html

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