PIN numbers, credit records, photo IDs and biometric measures play a central role in our daily lives. Instead of being mere by-products of public and private surveillance systems, such tokens of trust are now fundamental to surviving in modern society – so much so that our ‘surveillance profiles’ have begun to inform the way in which we think about notions of community and personal identity.
In this fascinating volume, Benjamin Goold considers how surveillance is experienced by individuals within both the criminal justice system and the wider community and argues that the convergence of different spheres of surveillance – law enforcement, state security and commercial – has led to a fundamental shift in the way in which individuals are recognized and legitimized in society. Using examples drawn from the US, UK, Canada, Japan and Australia, this book presents a new account of how surveillance is changing the ways in which people respond to crime, their relationship to the state and each other.