Crime, security and surveillance

The surveillance society has significantly been discussed in social sciences over the last ten years.  Phenomena like terrorist threats and illegal migration flows on the one hand and an anxious western population on the other seems to legitimize a considerable growth and sophistication of databases and surveillance technologies. Surveillance technologies may lead towards a more secure society for some. However they also have a profound rearranging effect on society and may be a threat for fundamental human rights. For these reasons social scientists have tried to slow down this fast-moving and self-evident evolution in the last ten years. In this volume we continue the debate by discussing the protagonists in the surveillance society: the surveillants and the surveilled. The contributions are set out on the consequences of surveillance technologies in specific settings:

- for the large diversity of public and private, official and informal surveillants  
- for the diversity of included or excluded, rich or poor, anxious or careless people under surveillance
- for the social interaction of the different actors in surveillance settings

The authors are international researchers with respective angles in sociology, anthropology, public administration, criminology, communication, legal studies, technology studies, ...  . The volume is the result of a collaboration in the frame of the European COST-network Living in Surveillance Societies (COST-LiSS). One of the central topics of discussion of the COST-LiSS - project was the everyday experiences of those living and working in surveillance societies.