Lyon rarely encrypts his work in academese, but this accessibility should not be confused with oversimplification. In just over 150 pages he has compressed countless brain-hours of analysis and speculation--few readers will be able to digest it in one sitting or even one reading. Indeed, he spends a fair amount of time poking at the simplifications of other analysts, winking at the reader with sly passages like this:

Are there really godlike operators who can control the city using a mouse and a keyboard? Such absolute power is scarcely visible in practice. The sheer mass of data would be impossible to handle. Even in SimCity one cannot keep track of everything.

Crucial reading for anyone concerned with privacy issues, Surveillance Society restages the debate over ubiquitous monitoring and encourages deeper thinking on all sides. --Rob Lightner

Product Description
Surveillance Society takes a post-privacy approach to surveillance with a new look at the relations between technology and society. Personal data is collected from us all the time, whether we know it or not, through identity numbers, camera images and retinal scans. The flows of personal data around the world have implications not just for threatened privacy but for the deepening social and cultural divisions of postmodernity. At the same time, surveillance is a taken-for-granted part of a global consumer world. This book gives an overview of current research on and developments in surveillance, including closed circuit TV and biometrics, illustrated by empirical examples. Such proliferating surveillance is encountered especially in the modern city, with its watchful cameras and the demand for plastic card ID and eligibility checks. People depend on it for security, convenience, and efficiency. But it increasingly depends on body-part passwords such as fingerprint scans and genetic tests, and also expands into the global domain as personal data flows across borders in the tourist passport or in electronic commerce. The computer matrix subtly sorts people into social categories of participation or privilege that include or exclude them according to ever-mutating codes.

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