Abstract
The chapter takes as its starting point the insight that contemporary surveillance is dynamic and not hierarchically structured and that (supervisory) power also generates resistance to the (same) power. The increasing power of the “new surveillance” therefore not only increases the capacity of the authorities (watchers) to monitor the watched majority but also carries an emancipatory potential. It focuses on surveillance arising from the bottom up—from the surveilled individual to corporate and state surveillance agencies. Firstly, it shows how drones are being resisted. It sheds light on forms of resistance to drones and the denial, subversion and distortion of drone surveillance systems. The objects of surveillance are empowered agents and active entities. They reflect on surveillance practices and attempt to escape and avoid them, thus drawing public attention to such practices as illegitimate, discriminatory or otherwise unfair. The chapter then shows the “other side” of surveillance: the co-option of drones for empowering ends. Drones are used to reverse the gaze and monitor those in power. such gaze is directed against state and corporate power and also in order to execute lateral surveillance. After offering several examples of empowering drone use and situating drones in the continuum from control to care, it shows the limitations of resistance by means of drones as the use of drones fails to address the underlying logic that feeds the “datasaur”—the tendency to submit everything to digitization—and intensifies corporate and state surveillance.
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Notes
- 1.
Closed-circuit television (CCTV), for instance, can make people feel safer in dark streets, or, on the contrary, can make them feel more anxious as they then assume the area must be “dangerous” (see Leman-Langlois 2008).
- 2.
See Badalič in this book, showing how the power of military drones used in Pakistan triggers resistance.
- 3.
See also the special edition of Surveillance & Society, 2010.
- 4.
See also the special edition of Surveillance & Society, 2005.
- 5.
See the notorious case of Booz Allen Hamilton and the “revolving door” effects of its vice chairman Mike McConnell or James Clapper, the director of the National Security Agency and a former executive at Booz Allen. See Riley 2013.
- 6.
See Chap. 3 in this book about the “moral economy” related to the unconditioned admiration of the “endless uses” of drone technology.
- 7.
See Cavoukian (2012) for features of privacy by design (PbD) with regard to drones.
- 8.
See the Electronic Frontier Foundation (2015) annual report, which evaluates how companies protect user data from government control and censorship.
- 9.
See Chap. 9 in this book.
- 10.
See Chap. 4 in this book.
- 11.
SeeChap. 3 in this book.
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to express his thanks to Ajda Gorjanc (www.helivideo.si) and Dr. Danijel Skočaj (Computer Vision Laboratory, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana) for technological insights, and Laura Matjašec and Sara Železnik who assisted with research. Special thanks are due to Dean J. DeVos, an English language editor, for his patience and diligence during our collaboration.
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Završnik, A. (2016). Drones, Resistance and Countersurveillance. In: Završnik, A. (eds) Drones and Unmanned Aerial Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23760-2_11
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