Surveillance: The Role of Databases in Contemporary Society

Abstract

However we use digital media, there is one issue that is never far from our minds, even if in practice it mainly operates far from our gaze. That issue is surveillance. Generally, we do not like being watched by strangers and are uneasy about the routine recording of our online activities. However, because we feel largely powerless to protect ourselves against increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous surveillance technologies, it is something that we try to relegate to the back of our minds, where, unless one is the victim of a mis-placed email or embarrassing photograph that goes viral, it will stay. However, this dormant sense of unease about being surveilled often comes alive during government attempts to legislate further erosions of our privacy, as happened when the UK’s New Labour government attempted to introduce ID cards in the first decade of the twenty-first century; ironically, as recent revelations about the activities of the NSA in the USA and GCHQ (General Communications Headquarters) in the UK have shown, the most egregious surveillance programmes have not been subject to even the most basic democratic oversight.