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Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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Title:
Simulation and Surveillance: The Logic of Prediction and the
Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
Author: Nikolaos Filippos Vaslamatzis
This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the MSc in Information
Technology, Management and Organisational Change degree of Lancaster University
Date: 12/09/2005
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………………….. iii
Ch. 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Prologue …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
1.2 Purpose of the paper ……………………………………………………………………………………… 4
1.3 Structure of the paper …………………………………………………………………………………….. 5
Ch. 2: SURVEILLANCE, GOVERNMENTALITY AND SIMULATION 6
2.1 Surveillance Studies ……………………………………………………………………………………… 7
2.1.1 Surveillance and Social Theory…………………………………………………………………… 7
2.1.2 Informationalisation and Data Surveillance …………………………………………………….. 9
2.2 The Nation-State, Governance and Governmentality ………………………………………………. 12
2.2.1 The Nation-State and Governance ……………………………………………………………… 12
2.2.2 Governmentality and the Art of Government …………………………………………………… 13
2.3 Simulation and Hypersurveillant Control ……………………………………………………………… 16
Ch. 3: METHODOLOGY 18
3.1 Research Framework ……………………………………………………………………………………… 19
3.2 Methodological Approach ……………………………………………………………………………….. 19
Ch. 4: DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS 21
4.1 Summary of Findings ……………………………………………………………………………………… 22
4.2 An Analytics of Government and Political Discourse……………………………………………….. 25
4.2.1 Panic State Regimes, the Politics of Reassurance and Knowledge…………………………. 26
4.2.2 Private Sector Influence and the „Resistance Frontier‟………………………………………… 28
4.2.3 Concluding Remarks ……………………………………………………………………………… 32
Ch. 5: LATE MODERN SCHEMAS OF GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL 33
5.1 Synopsis …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 34
5.2 Networks, Passage Points and Exclusion/Inclusion Circuits in the Airport ……………………. 35
5.3 Risk Rationalities, Actuarialism and Government Through Information………………………… 38
5.4 Designing Modern ‘Diagrams of Control’ ……………………………………………………………… 41
Ch. 6: EPILOGUE 42
Ch. 7: BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES 46
APPENDIX: [Whitepaper] AN ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF IDENTITY MANAGEMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM ………………………………
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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Acknowledgments To:
my supervisor for the pleasant and valuable conversations
my father, mother and sister for their invaluable support and understanding
my friends for respecting my choices and supporting me the last three months
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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Chapter 1: Introduction
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1.1 Prologue
Towards the end of the millennium, the basis of contemporary societies has been transformed by a
technological revolution the focus of which is information. Or better, this revolution based on information and
communication technologies has reshaped the economy-state-society triangle in all the direct and indirect
relationships between them. A major characteristic of the so called technological or digital revolution is the
development and exponential evolution of interactive computer/information networks that surpass geographical
barriers and enable new forms and channels of communication. Increasingly these information networks that
support the activities of monitoring humans (or simply surveillance) pervade all aspects of human activity.
Behind the virtualisation - informationalisation paradigm called upon, there stands a hypothesis that services
and their provision can be reduced into information flows and knowledge generation. Following Castells on the
recurring nature of informationalism, we can argue that the development of information processing
technologies can be seen as a circular process of self-improvement (Castells, 1996). The temporal orientation
of „the impossible real‟ (or the imaginary according to Bogard, 1996) of the informationalisation of surveillance
and simulation is the perfect recording of information and perfect control over this information – total
knowledge through complete transparency. This is neither an „alarm‟ sounding for the development of
totalitarian structures/organisms nor similar to the dystopic visions of Orwell. Rather, both the collection of
information (including personal information) and the adoption of surveillance technologies (covert or overt) are
arranged as necessary conditions to tackle social and political problems1, in the current social, economic and
political locale.
While surveillance can be interpreted as a phenomenon of capitalism, its origins or causal
relationships can be equally traced to the development of the (Western) European nation-state as well as
democracy; on the basis of which industrial and post industrial capitalism thrives (Giddens, 1981). Today
surveillance as computers is everywhere: the workplace (the employee), the organisation (the consumer), the
state (the citizen). Of interest to this paper are digital and data surveillance techniques; one the one hand they
shape the social conditions and social life that is organised around them, and on the other these technological
developments „embody‟ the rationalities of the socio-political context that make possible their development,
emergence and diffusion. Nonetheless, it is important to mention that data surveillance in the Information Age
is qualitatively and quantitatively different. It transcends distance (and other physical barriers) and time, is
capital rather than labour intensive, triggers a shift away from targeting towards categorical suspicion, focuses
on the prevention of violations, can be decentralised, encourages self-policing, is invisible and impersonalised,
becomes more intensive (e.g. through the use of biometrics for example) and covers increasingly more areas
of social life (G.T.Marx, 1988). For these reasons, Lyon, one of the most influential commentators of
surveillance literature, sees in the modern the rise of a „surveillance society‟.
In the study of state surveillance, the researcher comes about many paradoxes. On the one hand,
surveillance is necessary for the protection of rights emerging from the state-citizen relationship, but also
invades citizens‟ private spheres. Better administration of services that will benefit those who need it most (i.e.
welfare resources are better allocated to those unemployed who have a greater need and the more chances of
1 The UK Home Office has already insisted from 1995 that new identification mechanisms are needed in order to tackle
these social and political problems.
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being employed) is necessarily accompanied by social sorting techniques that may lead to unwanted negative
administration2. In other words, surveillance is simultaneously a means of social control and a means of
ensuring that citizens‟ rights are respected. As a result surveillance can be seen as the outcome of both the
quest of citizenship and of strategies to increase the level of control, having positive, as well as negative,
ramifications (Lyon, 1994).
The emergence of what has been termed „the new surveillance‟ supports the processes of
individualisation, commodification and consumerism (Graham and Marvin in Graham and Wood, 2003) that are
trends of a broader political-economic environmental shift towards liberalization and privatization of public
services and spaces. In the European West that is, advanced liberalism is the emergent „diagram of
government‟ (Rose, 1999). In this context, we witness a steadily rising recognition of simulation technologies
and pre-emptive techniques as important features of institutional practices (ranging from business systems re
engineering, organisational design and architectural design to risk management, customer relationship
management, deterrence strategy, military training, product quality control and other). Another feature of late
modernity has been that personal experiences of life are increasingly being shaped, among other things, by
relationships with organized social life, and this includes how organizations try to influence, manage, and
control individuals and populations through surveillant apparatuses. Because of the transformation of
techniques of subjectification the author argues that essentially it is methods of control that have changed. The
author will argue that this is because we do not live in disciplinary societies as Foucault has suggested; but at
a different epoch in which the logic of prediction is more important than that of diagnosis. If it is not risk
societies that we live in we cannot ignore the pervading effects of risk rationalities in a variety of institutions
(including nation state agencies such as the policing system and the welfare state, as well as other
organisations such as insurance companies and large service providers) that want to ensure their prolonged
survival by regulating levels of deviance and by devising strategies of anticipation and prevention.
2 Surveillance is both an enabler as well as a constrainer in the various facets of the citizen-state relationship.
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1.2 Purpose of the paper
The purpose of the research undertaken and presented in this document under the title “” is to explore
theories of social control in the specific context of the UK Identity Cards Bill proposal. In order to fulfil the
stated purpose, the author will use empirical observations as they were derived through the undertaking of a
joint research project with Accenture as part of the requirements of the MSc in Information Technology,
Management and Organisational Change (MSc ITMOC) degree of the Lancaster University. This joint research
was performed during the period June 1st – August 5
th, 2005 and materialised into a whitepaper under the title
”An Analysis of the Social and Political Implications of Identity Management in the UK”.
The purpose of this paper is twofold.
The first objective is to explore the various worldviews, modes of thought and strategies that play an
important role in understanding the development of the identity management proposal. In other words the
author will investigate into the political regime in which the rationalities of different actors (i.e. the nation state,
high tech private organisations and opposition groups) emerge. In order to achieve that objective the author
will draw on secondary data mainly derived from his interaction with the Accenture consultant, and information
published on the topic by a variety of sources ranging from official government documents to academic papers.
The second objective will be to analyse at a theoretical level the transformation of social control
through the introduction of new data surveillance practices enabled by the UK Identity Management Scheme.
complex pattern or dialectic of interaction between society and technology in late modern modes of
government and control. In order to achieve that objective the author will draw first on the study of control in
airports and second on the emergence of risk rationalities and actuarialism in the public sector (i.e. in the
welfare state). Blending this with the theories of simulation (see Baudrillard, Bogard) and societies of control
(see Deleuze), the author will further reason about the „diagram‟ of control in late modern societies.
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1.3 The structure of this paper
To facilitate the reader, this section contains a brief description of the remaining chapters of the report.
Along with the description, the main points of each chapter are summarised and presented.
Chapter 2 is concerned with building the theoretical foundings of the paper. After a brief summary of the four
traditional theoretical strands of surveillance studies, the author proceeds into a review of literature concerned
with the informationalisation or virtualisation of surveillance. Then the author moves on to review literature
regarding the nation state and government. In specific interest to the paper are the concepts of the conduct of
conduct or the way in which subjects are formed, as well as analytics of government. Within this review the
author introduces two areas of problematisations particularly relevant to the coherence of the paper, the risk
society and advanced liberalism. This chapter concludes with the review of Baudrillard‟s and Bogard‟s theories
of simulation as an important element of understanding modern surveillance.
Chapter 3 presents the methodological approach to the paper in simple terms and tries to make evident the
linkage between identity management and advanced liberal governmentality. It also includes a presentation of
the strategy followed in the whitepaper as well as factual details of the research project.
Chapter 4 comprises of the presentation of the summary of findings of our research project (i.e. the joint with
Accenture whitepaper) as well as an analytics of government. Regarding the latter, the author will try to
investigate into the episteme and techne of government analytics (Dean, 1999); the interpretations will be
studied through the prism of and linked to the concepts of rationality, rationalisation and knowledge and the
expression of their dynamic interplay by the major actors of the UK Id Cards Bill.
In Chapter 5 the author will place the resultant from the previous chapter government modes of thought into
institutional contexts aiming to see how the surveillance and simulation apparatuses that operate there support
and are supported by these mentalities. This analysis is based directly and indirectly on the findings of the
government analytics of the identity management proposal, but aims at moving away from a traditional
interpretative framework that would suggest an analysis based on the authoritarian potential of these
technologies. This section aims at presenting a conceptualisation of late modern regimes of control, based on
theories of simulation and deterrence, and reasoning on two themes, namely (a) the emergence of networks
as and (b) the risk based rationalities that underpin actuarial practices, as the most effective way of exercising
control.
Finally, chapter 6 is an epilogue that can be described as a critical reflection on other issues that complement
the author‟s analysis and support his view of modern control. In this section the author will also try to comment
on the impact of his project on future direction of studies of surveillance and control.
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Chapter 2: Surveillance, Governmentality and Simulation
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2.1 Surveillance Studies
2.1.1. Surveillance and Social Theory
Surveillance can be defined as „the coding of information‟ (Giddens, 1985) or „any collection and
processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of influencing or managing those
whose data have been garnered‟ (Lyon, 2001). Dandeker (1999, pp.37) regards surveillance as a „feature of all
social relationships‟ that involves the management of information and the supervision of individuals‟ activities.
Surveillance can also be considered as a capacity that enables the reinforcement of social and economic
divisions, to channel choices, direct desires as well as constrain and control. As with the emergence of any
new social science field (during mid 19th century
3), the field of surveillance studies has received interest from
and created tension between a multiplicity of theoretical perspectives. In this section, the author wishes to
explore four distinct surveillance „themes‟, namely political economy, bureaucracy, technological logic and
power.
The first theoretical perspective derives mainly from Marxian ideas. The inertia of surveillance is
closely connected with capitalist drives (for greater profit) in their various forms ranging from the constant
renewal of technology to increase efficiency to the efforts of managing consumption, to current business
imperatives of managing customer relationships (D.Lyon and E.Zureik in D.Lyon and E.Zureik, 1996). In this
theme, surveillance is seen as a strategic means for the reproduction of one class and its interest over
another. Second, Weberian studies of surveillance focus on the processes of rationalisation in the
development of organisations4. Weber‟s analysis showed that surveillance is not an issue of control driven by
capitalist dynamics but by processes of rationalisation inherent in the survival, adaptation and development of
modern organisations (Dandeker, 1999). Surveillance is seen as a necessary component to successfully
eliminate irrationalities by enabling bureaucratic means that produce rationally calculable administrative action
(Lyon, 2001). The third theoretical strand is that of technological logic, represented by the work of J.Ellul and
his concept of la technique. La technique is an orientation towards means and not ends, that seeks the
optimum way to operate and in doing so removes human agency from the equation. The apparent
technological determinism of this approach is summarised in the notion of „self-completing system‟ (Ellul,1980).
The Ellulian argument has strong psychological orientations such as the self-justifying, self-augmenting
characterisations of technology; in this respect surveillance‟s imaginary of perfect technologically-mediated
perception is driven by desire5 (Lyon, 2001). Finally, the theme of power is mainly represented by Foucault and
his work centred on the diffusion of disciplinary practices throughout modern social institutions. For Foucault,
power is an essentially ubiquitous element of all social relationships, though not necessarily negative. In his
work, the prevailing „diagram‟ of power is Bentham‟s architectural design of the panopticon as the physical
embodiment of a disciplinary ideal (Foucault, 1979). The panopticon is an observatory, based on utilitarian
principles; its operative logic is the inspection from a central hub of the activities of those at the periphery
3 Sewell (1999) argues its history can be taken to coincide with the manifestation of proto-modern organizations associated
with the industrial revolution 4 The state is also considered here to be a form of organisation or an assemblage of complex bureaucracies.
5 Desire is a field of immanence, the inner will of all processes and events (Deleuze and Guattari, ).
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(B.Simon, 2005). As Zuboff (1988, p.321) rightly observes, the panopticon represents „a form of power that
displays itself automatically and continuously‟ and „produces the twin possibilities of observation and control„.
Thereafter, surveillance in the sense of Foucault does not only include the supervisory process but also the
collection, ordering and deployment of information and knowledge.
The above theoretical strands and especially the work of Foucault place the theoretical basis to
develop theories of social control. Bentham‟s diagram of the panopticon has been one of the most influential
metaphors in surveillance studies (Norris, 2003 in Lyon, 2003). The panopticon as Foucault observed, has the
potential „to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic
functioning of power‟ (Foucault, 1977), and thus is more than an architectural form of visualisation. According
to Foucault, societies of the present operate according to a disciplinarian schema6 (Foucault, 1979);
disciplinary technologies, in the 20th century, do not simply diffuse from the institution (the prison) outwards to
the world but rather the transformation of the prison is a concrete form of the diffusive process (Bogard, 1991).
In synthesising the above theoretical streams, surveillance helps explain modernity7 in terms of the following
features. First, the capitalist organisation is both a bureaucratic system for administering the internal
operations of the firm and a means of monitoring its external relations with other organisations and its
customers. Second, in post industrial societies we can talk about the transformation of the relations between
society and institutions. Third, the nation-state is both an internally pacified „citizenship state‟ and a
geopolitical and military actor in a world of competing nation-states (Giddens, 1985). Fourth, the growth of
bureaucratic surveillance is the basis of systems of administrative power, particularly in strategic organisations
of the nation state and the capitalist business enterprise (Dandeker, 1999). Fifth, the magnification of
surveillance functions as well as their extension into other spheres is seen as an immediate result of its
computerisation (Lyon, 2001; G.T.Marx, 1988).
6 Schema or „diagram‟ of the forces and power relations – the diagram for Foucault is embedded the social relations it
constitutes „as an immanent cause‟ (Bogard, 1991) 7 For Giddens surveillance is taken up as one of the four institutions of modernity (Giddens, 1985)
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2.1.2 Informationalisation and Data Surveillance
Moving in what many have termed the Information Age, surveillance has itself entered a new period that many
commentators have characterised as the new surveillance (G.T.Marx, 2003), electronic surveillance (D.Lyon,
1996) or ,to relate to the panopticon, superpanopticon (M.Poster, 1990) and post panopticism (R.Boyne,
2000). Modern, computerised, surveillance technologies not only resemble but also surpass the dystopic
visions of science fiction writers such as G.Orwell and P.K.Dick. In the future, assuming that the relationship
between cost and computational power of technology remains based on Moore‟s law, technologically mediated
surveillance will have the ever-increasing capacity to intensify, expand and make denser its gaze and
practices.
In contemporary societies individuals „reside‟ in a multiplicity of database systems ranging from
commercial databases to government agencies (the welfare system). Databases from a Foucaultian
perspective of discourse are
[…] carefully arranged lists, digitalised to take advantage of the electronic speed (my comment: and power in general) of computers. The list is partitioned vertically into “fields” for items such as name, address, sex and horizontally into “records” that designate each entry. (M.Poster, 1996)
In each database, profiles of individuals are constructed in the form of their „data double‟, „digital persona‟
(R.Clarke, 1988), „database self‟ or „dividual‟ (Deleuze, 1990). Because modern daily life involves interactions
and transactions that generate electronic records8 (with constantly increasing intensity) individuals become
fixed in media that can be examined and reviewed at will. Dataveillance (or data surveillance) refers to „the
systematic monitoring of people‟s actions or communications through the application of information technology‟
(R.Clarke, 1988). This definition confirms a general move away from processes of human supervision and
physical co-location; in essence, the importance of dataveillance lies in the application of codes on data to
mine, manipulate, sort, cluster and forecast information about populations. A number of commentators have
suggested that the introduction of more sophisticated digital technologies and software architectures enables
the perfection of Foucault‟s panopticon9. Modern surveillance practices do not only focus their gaze to its
subjects but also to the context through „a more passive and mundane gathering and collation, by bureaucratic
and commercial organizations of what has been called „transactional information‟‟ (Robins & Webster, 1988).
This dual nature of the use of information and communications technologies makes individuals increasingly
visible, considering that our everyday life is increasingly mediated by both institutions and technologies. Data
surveillance literature drawing from the aforementioned basic surveillance theory streams (revert to section
2.1.1) emphasises the use of databases, data matching, profiling and the resulting social sorting. Within this
new emphasis, it is argued that social life and social control are transformed in a variety of ways.
A growing body of literature, has been concerned with the economic and political consequences,
emphasising processes of discrimination and social sorting, that flow from the loss of control over personal
8 One should better argue that technology is becoming the means of social relationships.
9 see Poster‟s discursive interpretation of the panopticon (Poster, 1996)
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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information10
(see D.Lyon, 2001; Lyon, 1996; Lyon, 2003 O.H. Gandy, 1993; Graham and Wood, 2003;
G.C.Bowker and S.L.Star, 1999). By operating both overtly and covertly, existing surveillance systems aim at
sorting the population in order to permit access or exclude from the participation in a multitude of events,
experiences and processes (Lyon, 2003). This classification process is used to determine who should be
targeted for special treatment, eligibility, access, etc. In contrast to traditional forms of control that aimed at
apprehending and normalising the offender ex post facto, surveillance monitors conduct by logics embedded
or designed in the flows and networks of everyday existence and practice (N.Rose, 1999). These logics
undermine the presumption of innocence, eventually shifting the burden of proof to the individual (G.T.Marx,
1986). Conventional perspectives on the evolution of social control are commonly portrayed as the shift from
overt, external and corrective to covert, internal and preventive control; this is considered as a shift from
reactive to proactive form of discipline and social control (Kim, 2004). This can also be interpreted as a shift
towards pre-emptive surveillance and categorical suspicion11
. In the context of the welfare administration (and
not only), some checking takes place before an individual receives a government benefit or service
(C.J.Bennett, 1996). This means that data surveillance can be both anticipatory and include an element of
continuous sorting and refining the database self through recorded operations of embodied individuals.
The quality of life of most individuals has therefore changed because (a) institutions make decisions
„on the basis of information about them or someone “like” them‟ and (b) the whole process occurs outside the
population‟s conscious awareness (O.H. Gandy, 1995). Gandy draws mainly on Weberian approaches (e.g.
the rationalisation of marketing) and uses Foucault‟s panopticon as an analytical tool to define the panoptic
sort as
a discriminatory technology that assigns people to groups of winners or losers on the basis of countless bits of personal information that have been collected, stored, processed and shared through an intelligent network (O.H. Gandy, 1995)
This „difference engine‟ (which according to Gandy‟s work is „discriminatory by definition‟ and „is guided by a
utilitarian rather than an ethical standard‟) depends upon digital technologies and technical rationalisation to
collect evaluate and store and retrieve personal information and control human behaviour (M.Kim, 2004).
These processes serve the rationalisation and efficiency imperatives of the risk-avoiding and opportunity-
seeking institution (through processes of intelligent narrowing), but also pervades all aspects of individuals‟
existence – employment, citizenry and consumption.
Another important contribution to emerging surveillance literature is that of the concept of surveillant
assemblages12
. The convergence of (once discrete) surveillance systems functions by abstracting human
bodies from territorial settings, separating them into flows and then reassembling them at centres of calculation
into their data double or dividual that can be scrutinized, targeted for intervention, classified, etc (K.D.Haggerty
10
Closely related to the increased intensity and scope of surveillant assemblages 11
This can be also found in Gandy‟s problematisations (Gandy, 1995) is that of categorical vulnerability; members of classes and groups today are unaware of their membership and of the rules (codes) that define their inclusion/exclusion, and thus cannot create class consciousness, solidarity and group identification (sociology studies recognise all these as fundamental characteristics of group and classes). In practice, both beneficiaries and disadvantaged individuals are unaware about the digital prioritization processes that have taken place subtly, in the background; this eventually gives these processes an invisible and opaque quality. 12
An assemblage is defined as a multiplicity of heterogeneous objects whose unity relies on the fact that they work together as a functional entity (Patton, 1994 in K.D.Haggerty and R.V.Ericson, 2000)
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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and R.V.Ericson, 2000). The nature of surveillant systems according to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) is
rhizomic13
in two ways: first they spread out and second they have a leveling effect on hierarchies. These
emphasise that the level of scrutiny (depth and intensity) increases (as contact with institutions increases, but
also through participation in citizenship activities), as well that it is directed uniformly towards all groups and
classes (the idea of synopticon14
). As a result, surveillance is democratized; in principle the many are watching
the few as much as the many are watched by the few (R.Boyne, 2000).
Furthermore, the virtualisation of surveillance has promoted a new round of space-time distanciation.
Not only is it possible for the observer to be far away in time and space but also there can be no observer at
all. Eligibility of access, entitlement of services or punishment (extreme but existing form) can be coded into
software that as political artifacts represent the interest of its creators and fulfill a social need, through the
crystalisation of non-acceptable norms as algorithmic conditions. The evolving problematisations of automated
systems are that they aim to facilitate exclusionary rather than inclusionary goals (Norris, 2002 in Graham and
Wood, 2003), as well as that there is a shift in the orientation from salient towards silent technologies (Introna
and Wood, 2004)15
. Furthermore, post-modern emphasis of surveillance systems is not only in facilitating the
making of the past visible but mainly of the future. Software models applied on collected information seek to
extrapolate the future from the present and immediate past; they seek to predict the future (C.Norris, 2003). As
the major author of CCTV monitoring literature suggests,
What is more certain, especially after the events of 11 September 2001, is that there will be increased investment in a whole raft of biometric surveillance technologies, and that the ability to identify a face and track an individual through space will be increasingly perfected (C.Norris, 2003)
As a result, most commentators argue that patterns of control in informational societies have been enhanced
by new and more powerful computer and information based techniques.
Finally, any type of information transfer implies the decontextualisation of the information from the
environment it was collected and its recontextualisation at a different physical or virtual space. That means that
what was actually captured was not simple data but information i.e. „information is data that have been put into
a meaningful and useful context‟ (see Burch and Grudniski, 1989 ,p.4). The meaning comes from the context
surrounding the information or, said in another way, it is only within context that the information is meaningful.
So, if the structures and relationships are removed (or altered) from the original context of the information
(Lyon, 2003 in Lyon, 2003), this information abandons its meaning. Following, when this information is
reconstituted within a second context of interpretation it is assigned new meaning.
13
A rhizome is a plant that grows in surface extensions through interconnected vertical root systems (K.D.Haggerty and
R.V.Ericson, 2000) 14
For an account of the synopticon see T.Mathiesen (1997) „The Viewer Society‟ 15
The distinction between silent and salient technologies is not necessarily a dichotomy as the authors argue but a continuum
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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2.2 The Nation-State, Governance and Governmentality
2.2.1 The Nation State and Governance
It has been argued that states have the authority over the legitimate „means of movement‟ (Torpey,
2000), a thesis that flows in accordance with the evolution of new architectures of governance – based on
surveillance and control – after the 9/11 attacks that in effect serve to protect citizens from mobile threats that
transcend traditional dangers to states (Carter, 2002 IN P.Adey, 2003). Additionally, the modern nation-state is
also seen as „the pre-eminent form of power container, as a territorially bounded (although internally highly
regionalised) administrative unity‟ (Giddens, 1985). The object of government is the population and the
purpose of government embraces a wide array of methods of satisfying the needs and aspirations of its object
(Foucault, 1978); the welfare of the population, the increase of its health, the security of its properties16
, etc.
Modern approaches to social and political analyses in the field of governance portray a change of direction in
the thinking of political power away from the concept of the hegemonic role of the state. In normative
approaches to governance, governance tends to be judged as good if political strategies aim at minimising the
role of the nation-state (the motif is: „to govern better the state must govern less‟), encouraging non-state
mechanisms of regulation, reducing the size of the political apparatus and civil service and changing the role of
politics in the management of social and economic affairs (N.Rose, 1999).
Government analytics must take into consideration what have been described as liberal styles of
government. Throughout the history of the nation-state, strategies of political rule entailed complex, interrelated
and variable relationships between the actions of seeking to exercise rule over a territory/ population/nation
and „a microphysics of power acting at a capillary level within a multitude of practices of control that proliferate
across a territory‟ (N.Rose, 1999). This historical observation does not mean that we should think of the
political power of the apparatuses of the nation-state as non existent but that the place of the state within
specific strategies and practices of governing is one element in multiple circuits of power, within a variety of
complex assemblages, and ultimately a question of empirical study. It is also important to add that liberal
rationalities of government consider „the optimum performance of the economy at minimum economic and
sociopolitical cost‟ (Burchell, 1996)17
. In doing so liberalism becomes not a theory or ideology but a practice
that aims at regulating itself by means of a sustained reflection (J.Z.Bratich, ) and as a result its object of
concern becomes its own activity and its limits (Burchell, 1991 in .Z.Bratich, ).
So, an analytics of government examines the conditions through which regimes of practices emerge,
are maintained and are transformed (Dean, 1999). In this respect, any study of the nation-state should
pressupose its ineluctable tendency to centralise, control, regulate and manage the population within its
geographical territories. The nation-state is inclined to create bounded physical and cognitive spaces and then
introduce processes designed to capture flows. In seeking to „striate the space over which it reigns‟ (Deleuze
and Guattari, 1987, pp.158), the state faces the imperative of introducing breaks and divisions into free flowing
16
In contrast to sovereignty that has as a purpose the act of government 17
A descriptive account of the field of liberalism, neo (advanced) liberalism and the different schools (Ordoliberalen, the Chicago school of economic liberalism) of liberal government, is out of the scope of this paper: the presented work suffices for the purposes of this paper
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
16
phenomena (K.D.Haggerty and R.V.Ericson, 2000). The nation-state depends upon surveillance for the
management of flows to ensure its survival – three modern social processes can be identified to underlie their
relationship. First, control shifting from personal and targeted to impersonal leads to what has been termed
„formal-legal rationalisation‟ (Dandeker, 1999) of the legitimisation of rule within institutions. Second, there is a
shift (not necessarily displacing but also complementing) from personal and direct exercise of surveillance
powers (supervisory and disciplinary) to systems of deterrence and prevention (Lyon, as social sorting;
Bogard, 1991). Lastly, the development of increasingly elaborate systems of collecting, storing and processing
(sorting) information regarding both the internal and external environment of the agency or organisation
(Dandeker, 1999).
Modern governmental modes and ways of ruling for Rose, entail a process of thought and a certain
form of reason, the basis of which have been a variety of (empirical and normative) studies of the emergence
of modern institutions such as crime control, social insurance, welfare state and airport (see M.Auge, ;1995)
institutions. Based on the literature presented in the previous section (data surveillance), the central motif of
advanced liberal governance becomes „to rule efficiently it is necessary to rule in light of knowledge of the
subject that rule is exercised upon‟ (N.Rose, 1999). In the last couple of decades, subtle less coercive forms of
control have emerged while societies have not become less democratic and (western European) nation-states
make admittedly less use of violence. This decline in the use of violent and heavily coercive means has been
associated, with increased use of softer and embedded and remote forms of control (G.T.Marx, 2001).
Furthermore, the information gathering processes of the nation-state have been extended from focused and
direct coercion used ex post facto and against a particular target, to anticipatory actions of a categorically
suspicious population entailing diffused panoptic vision (in this view technical innovations are seen as enablers
of the transformation of social control) (G.T.Marx, 1986). So, policing systems and other institutions (e.g.
special attention has been paid to advanced liberal government in welfare systems) are symptomatic of
broader trends towards attempted prediction and pre-emption of behaviours that signify a shift towards
actuarialism or actuarial justice (Lyon, 2003) also termed new penology seeking „techniques for identifying,
classifying and managing groups sorted by levels of dangerousness‟ (Feeley and Simon, 1994, in F.Stadler
and D.Lyon, 2003).
2.2.2 Governmentality and the Art of Government
The semantic linking of gouverner (governing) and mentalité (mode of thought or mentality18
) in the
concept of governmentality indicates that technologies of power are closely interrelated to the political
mentalities underpinning them. It is also important to acknowledge that the word government for Foucault is
not restricted to its pure political meaning but is a concept encountered in a variety of contexts including the
management of the state and until the 18th century signified problems of self control, management of the
household, directing the soul, etc (Lemke, 2000).
Governmentality is an area of inquiry that does not address directly the strategies of government,
questions of power or relations of force nor is concerned with law. It is concerned with the epistemological
18
Wrongly termed sometimes rationality
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
17
presuppositions and their institutionalisation in specific knowledge processes and practices by which subjects
and things (including of course subjectified human beings) are administered (M.Dillon, 1995, pp.330). Thus,
governmentality is a domain of cognition concerned with the conduct of conduct, not simply making use of
knowledge but also comprising of it19
. So, the notions of government and governmentality mark a field of
inquiry of modern operations of power/knowledge (N.Rose, 1999). Governmentality in this view is seen as
encompassing the thematics of sovereignty, discipline and bio-power20
, rather than being part of the „triangle‟
sovereignty-discipline-governmentality21
.
Each is reorganised in the context of the general problematics of government, which concerns the best way to exercise powers over conduct individually and en masse so as to secure the good of each and of all. It is not a question of a succession of forms but of the ways in which the discovery of new problems for government – and the invention of new forms of government – embraces, recodes, reshapes those that pre-exist them. (ibid, pp.23-24)
The aim of governmentality studies is to unveil the underlying rationality of government. In other words, they
investigate the manners and rationales of government or better the manner in which government seeks to
shape conduct by working through the public‟s beliefs, aspirations, interests and desires (Marlow, 2002). As a
result, Marlow continues, government is perceived as an ongoing, intentional (purposeful) course of action.
And as such it is an art22
since it involves the mobilisation of tacit and explicit knowledge that crystalises
through political decisions into the pragmatics of government. Therefore the emergence of a line of questioning
concerned with the ways in which programmes of government are formulated and articulated within broad
discourses of „political rationalities‟ (P.O‟Malley et al., 1997). Finally, an analytics of government can also be
characterised as „materialist analysis‟ (Dean, 1999) because, in a way, places regimes of government at the
centre of the analysis and seeks to elucidate on their logic.
One of the most interesting and controversial extensions of (rather than direct contributions to)
governmentality literature can be summarised under the concept of the „risk23
society‟ (R.V.Ericson and
K.D.Haggerty, 1997). In this context, the governance of all aspects of institutional domains is organised as the
management of potential dangers (or risks). To illustrate this thesis the authors explore police as „an especially
instructive vehicle for understanding risk society‟. Then they generalise to all modern institutions by saying that
19
This is that mentalities of government are influenced by the forms of knowledge that are part of our social, and cultural products (Dean, 1999 ,p.17) 20
Bio-power operates at social spaces making up people and fabricating them into the logic of the norm 21
Dean (1999, p.19) suggests that governmentality implies a relationship with other forms of power (i.e. sovereignty and discipline) 22
The historical evolution of prisons from the oubliette (from the French verb oublier which means to forget, this characterization of medieval prisons highlights that prisoners were locked away and forgotten) to penitentiaries (places designed in such a way that inmates become repenting of their crimes) is for Foucault a sound example of describing the transformation of power regimes and governmentality from the pre-modern to modernity. Furthermore, for Foucault (1978), after a series of observations regarding state transformations that took place from the 16
th to the 18
th century, the art of
government involves two dimensions. It is essentially concerned with transliterating the economic principles of family management (the economy involved in the management of goods, wealth and individuals in a family, by the paternal figure) onto the state and political practices. In addition, the art of government is concerned with the right disposition of things
(men and their relations to things; an ‟imbrication of men and things‟) through the employment of tactics – not laws –, to an end convenient to each of these things. It can be argued that contemporary modes of government have been centred around these two pivotal themes 23
Risk is not a static or objective phenomenon but rather is constructed and negotiated within a network of social interaction (D.Lupton, 1999), a definition that is favoured by the author is „incalculable uncertainties‟ as used by U.Beck (1995)
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
18
risks, lie at the root of everything and as a result risk – knowledge structures govern social life. Surveillance in
this theory is driven from the imperatives of risk management (Lyon, 2001). In current institutional
environments, we witness the emergence of risk rationalities (increasingly pervading all aspects of routine life)
that are designed to reduce the uncertainties that organisations face, and in order to do so „bring imagined
futures to the present‟ (R.V.Ericson and K.D.Haggerty, 1997, pp.87). Therefore, institutions organise
themselves around the accumulation of information about risks increasing their awareness about further risks
and, in the process, the risk-knowledge dialectic creates its own internal momentum. However, the recognition
of the risks associated with their management also means the recognition of the receding ideals of security
and control (Andrejevic, 2005). It is through uncertainty and knowledge seeking that risk rationalities surface
and are sustained; the more importance is given to risks the greater the need for more knowledge to reveal
new risks and better treat/manage/prevent current risks – this is how „the risk-knowledge process gains its
internal momentum‟ (O‟Malley in Andrejevic, 2005). Risk based regimes draw attention to the riskiness of
everything and the certainty of nothing to initiate a circle of unending demand for knowledge and governance
as new risks are discovered and previous risks are re-evaluated (P.O‟Malley, 1999).
In way of conclusion, I will summarise the emerging themes in the study of governmentality. First,
governing involves much more than the activities of government (N.Rose, 1999). Moreover, the conduct of
conduct is a more general term for any calculated direction of human conduct. Governmentality what is more,
emerges at the contact point between technologies of domination of others and technologies of the self
(Foucault, 1988) thus stressing the relationship between the constitution of the subject and the formation of the
state. The question then shifts from „how does government governs us‟ to „how do we govern ourselves‟
(H.K.Colebatch, 2002). A governmentality approach also offers a view on power that encompasses and goes
beyond perspectives centred on consensus or violence. Within governmentality, emphasis is on power as
guidance („Furhung‟) i.e. governing the forms of self government by structuring and shaping the fields of
possible subject actions, while violence, coercion and consensus are instruments or elements but not the
foundation of power/knowledge relationships (Lemke, 2000). Finally, attention is focused on „the ways of
thinking and acting which render conduct governable – the mentalities or rationalities which underlie rule, the
ways in which problems are discerned, expertise is formed and mobilised, […] and codes of practice formed
and promulgated‟ (H.K.Colebatch, 2002).
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
19
2.3 Simulation and Hypersurveillant Control
On the four aforementioned theoretical strands the author wishes to add simulation, a more
marginalized, post-structural perspective primarily based on the work of Baudrillard (1983), Deleuze (1990)
and Bogard (1996). Simulation can be defined as a means of verisimilitude (Der Derian, 1990 in Bogard,
1996), i.e. ways of replacing actual with virtual processes or electronic signs/images of objects for their real
counterparts. Baudrillard‟s thesis is that models supersede the reality that is implemented on generated
models and hence is not real but hyperreal – the precession of simulacra. But the question „why is it hyperreal‟
is not yet fully answered. Simulating is not as simple as feigning. Simulation reproduces the symptoms24
or
effects but also designates the power of producing an effect (Deleuze, 1990), eventually blurring the
boundaries and distinctions between the pairs real: virtual25
, true: false. Baudrillard argues,
No more imaginary coextensivity: rather, genetic miniaturisation is the dimension of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturised units, from matrices, memory banks, and command models – and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal, the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere. (Baudrillard, 1983)
Something is simulated, in simple words, by its reduction to those signs which attest its existence. This depicts
a redefinition of the real to that which can be reproduced or that which is always pre-emptively reproduced, „a
hyperreal … which is entirely in simulation‟ (Baudrillard, 1983).
Simulation starts from the utopia of this principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every reference. (emphasis in original) (ibid.)
In contrast to data surveillance literature, Baudrillard sees the end of the panoptic system as a shift in
the ideal of control away from transparency. Any idea of transparency presupposes an objective space and the
omnipotent gaze of the observer. That signifies a shift from panoptic mechanisms of surveillance to systems of
deterrence in which the real is confused with the model or the medium (see Baudrillard, 1996, pp.29-30). The
Age of Simulation begins with the liquidation of all referentials and their artificial reproduction in systems of
signs; all that is real can be descriptively reproduced by those signs that make it real, in other words, an
operation to deter every real process by its operational double (Bogard, 1996).
Today, profiles and other forms of coded information are used extensively by police officials (in making
arrests and create suspects), hospitals (to assist in diagnosis e.g. expert systems), welfare agencies (to
distribute and manage the distribution of benefits), insurance companies (to classify individuals and manage
risks) and other institutions in order to anticipate actual events and control their outcome. Bogard‟s thesis is
24
This is not necessary for feign processes. For extended insight see the instructive example of feigning and simulating an illness (Baudrillard, 1983, pp.5-7) 25
In Deleuze‟s work, the virtual and the real are not two opposites; the real‟s relevant contrast is with the possible and the virtual is what is already actual and not merely possible
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
20
that technologies of simulation are forms of hypersurveillant26
control27
. In order to explain the direction that
surveillance societies are taking today, simulation must be interpreted as a progress towards the perfection
and totalisation of existing surveillance technologies and not as a radical break in their historic development
(Bogard, 1996). Therefore, simulation studies come to supplement the aforementioned theoretical streams
(revert to section 2.1.1) for the study of surveillance in modern societies. Simulation technology is a major
element of the imaginary of surveillance control (which is itself a fantasy of power) – a fantastic dream of
seeing everything, recording every fact and (whenever and wherever) possible accomplishing these things
prior to the manifestation of the event itself. Technologies of exposure and recording, through this viewpoint
are technologies of pre-exposure and pre-recording, a technical operation in which control functions are
reduced to the modulation of preset codes. In other words, simulation satisfies the need to see everything in
advance therefore both as something that can be and already is anticipated. Based on the somewhat futuristic
view that every event is programmable and any image is observable, simulation technology offers a novel
perspective for dealing with the limits of space and time, energy, the human body, communication, memory; for
all of which it „offers up fantastic, technically imaginative solutions‟ (Bogard, 1996). In this context, simulation
can be seen as the panoptic imaginary a combination of the absence of real (simulation) and the unmasking of
its presence (surveillance). Simulated surveillance refers to a paradox of control because it fantasises both its
totality (its hyperrealisation or its „reconfiguration as a simulacrum within an informated order‟) and its absence
(its re-temporalisation as a virtual phenomenon) (Bogard, 1996).
26
The prefix hyper is not used to define the intensification of surveillance but rather the effort to think of surveillance technologies to their absolute limits (see Bogard, 1996, pp. 4) 27
In contrast to the majority of studies of social control in post industrial societies that have in most cases ignored the concept of simulation, virtual forms of control and the resulting delusion of sociality
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
21
Chapter 3: Methodology
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
22
3.1 Research Framework
The research project, undertaken collaboratively between LUMS (MSc in IT, Management and
Organisational Change) and Accenture was part of a wider tactic of Accenture to investigate into the UK
Identity Cards Bill, before they actively engage in it by bidding for a private public partnership. Their two areas
of interest, namely identity management and border control in the UK, were the two undertaken projects by
Lancaster university students between the June 1st and the August 1
st, 2004. The author is a co-writer
(together with Mrs. M.Bariami) of the Identity Management in the UK whitepaper as presented in the appendix.
The Lancaster university project teams had contact with an Accenture liaison (Mr. Alasdair Macdonald,
current role is in the Customer Data Management business unit), the communication being mainly through e
mail. In addition, we participated in a kick off meeting and a mid term presentation was delivered for the
purpose of presenting preliminary findings and aligning the focus of the research projects with the liaison‟s
expectations. Furthermore, we participated in two tele-conferencing calls with senior Accenture consultants in
order to clarify ambiguities and better understand their approach to identity management and border control. In
parallel the two co-authors‟ attended research coordination meetings where open discussions on the topic of
identity management were encouraged and the progress and structure of the research project was evaluated.
The sources of information for our research included (1) publications from the UK government and agencies,
(2) responses from international and other civil liberties groups (e.g. Human Rights Committee), (3)
publications from similar governmental projects globally, (4) academic research papers and finally (5) private
sector whitepapers. Finally the resulting research paper28
has been submitted to Accenture (07/08/2005) to be
circulated within the consulting firm and their partners. A final presentation to an open audience has been
arranged for the 12th of September.
3.2 Rationale and Methodological Approach
In the whitepaper we start from the assumption that National IdM is inevitable. First, we defined
national identity management, its main social, political and economic drivers and identified its scope and
objectives. Then the authors explored and conceptualized the proposed scheme (i.e. the draft UK Id Cards
Bill), by discussing its intended outcomes, performing a SWOT Analysis, delineating some elements of the
political background, defining its building blocks or components as well as investigating the uses of the
scheme. Based on our initial assumption we proceeded to an investigation of different approaches at a
technological and process level. Our focus was at the alternative ways the scheme could be organised at the
process level and the main processes considered were: enrollment, identification, authentication and
authorisation. By doing so and in parallel examining the UK Id Cards Bill we laid the foundations for the main
part of our whitepaper: the organisational, social and political implications and risks. These were structured into
four main categories, namely (a) technological implications, (b) process implications, (c) governmental and
organisational implications and (d) citizen and society implications.
28
The sources of information for our research included (1) publications from the UK government and agencies, (2) responses from international and other civil liberties groups (e.g. Human Rights Committee), (3) publications from similar governmental projects globally, (4) academic research papers and finally (5) private sector whitepapers.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
23
As made evident from the whitepaper to the author the identity management scheme becomes one of
the components of government agencies that deal with individuals but is also very likely that it will become a
component of independent service providers. As seen in the previous chapter, this opinion is supported by
high tech consultancy organisational fields that see a wide range of business re organisation opportunities on
the basis of the scheme. In other words the biometric enabled identity management scheme is a step towards
the transformation of service delivery that will not give competitive advantage to any specific organisation but
will enable the more general elevation of the level of citizen/customer satisfaction and quality of services
delivery. The identity management scheme will therefore substantially reshape the strategies of these
institutions that will adopt it; it has the potential of eliminating the current anticipation of „normal damage‟ or
financial loss tolerated by these organisations (normally passed down to individuals as extra costs) as well as
making possible a new level of understanding of the individual. The individual that is currently constituted
multiple times and with variable accuracy in the databases of these institutions (as the database self or digital
persona) will through the scheme become more precise. Therefore the strategies of service tailoring and
provision will become accurately realisable, enabling the increase of significance of customer relationship
management and service delivery in the agenda of these organisations and a subsequent increase in
application (because the barriers of incalculability and low quality information in the information bases will be
transcended through the scheme) of strategies of anticipation of the future needs. What will be argued is that
passage points (human or nonhuman) are the direct result of an identity management scheme that within the
current consumerism culture (or culture of contentment) while the logic of prediction and foresight based on
information of the past will finally have the „strength‟ to become the primary focus of organisations. Identity
management is much more than a traditional authoritarian and utilitarian utopia – it is a firm step in the
transformation of the fields of visibility of institutions not only deeper into the space (the body, the identity
details of the individual) but also forward into time (through the projection of anticipatory simulations).
Both the whitepaper as well as the empirical evidence derived from our conversations/communication
with the Accenture liaison are considered to be the input for this paper. Building from these primary and
secondary data, this paper will reasons on two themes. First, and laying the foundation for the second, an
analytics of government and in particular of the „techne‟ and „episteme‟ dimensions (Dean, :pp.19-32), based
mainly on empirical data. Second, an attempt to place identity management into its cultural and social context
by reconsidering the concepts introduced in the literature review, so as to reason on the modern „diagram of
power‟ and to define characteristics of social control. This is a theoretical analysis, supported from the
empirical interpretations and based on the literature presented on surveillance, simulation, the risk society and
advanced liberal diagrams of government.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
24
Chapter 4: Discussion of Findings
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
25
4.1 Summary of Findings
This section incorporates a summary of the findings of our research project as presented in
<Appendices 1-7>. Identity management is an issue that arises in any type of social constructs and throughout
history, from the village of archaic times to the modern metropolis. Identity management systems29
have
evolved through a complex interaction of technological developments, social influences and organisational
reconfigurations. Today, government agencies face the intricate challenge of effectively and securely
controlling population flows, identifying individuals, and managing their access to services, while aligning their
strategies with citizen‟s expectations for convenience, security and privacy. National identity management
systems are proposed as the solution to these governmental challenges and are driven by a more mobile
society and the associated need for better management and control of borders, the need to combat terrorism
and organised crime and the rehabilitation of the social perception of security and order, the need to increase
the efficiency of public sector operations and the related citizens‟ needs for convenience and speed at service
points, the financial losses stemming from identity related fraud, as well as the effective delivery of
eGovernment services (for a complete list of the drivers see <Appendix pp. >).
The UK identity management scheme incorporates a broad administrative area responsible for
identifying individuals within the nation-state boundaries and controlling their access to resources/services by
associating user rights and restrictions with the established identity. Therefore, it is seen as a convergence of
technologies and processes; the main process and technical components of modern nationwide identity
management systems are illustrated in the following two tables30
.
Table : Identity Management Technologies
Biometrics
Biometrics represent a fundamental shift in identification systems from something one owns (card), knows (password) or does (signature) to something he is (iris pattern). Currently there is increased interest in multimodal systems that reduce some of the weaknesses inherent in biometric systems (accuracy, reliability).
Smart Id cards
Increase in processing power and memory capabilities of the chips embedded into the card, enable more reliable forms of identity authentication and thus can facilitate multiple functions mostly relating to transactions with government agencies and private sector service providers.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure refers to information and database systems which can be arranged in centralised and decentralised architectures to collect, process, store biometric, id card and other information. Recently, we have witnessed increased interest in privacy-enhancing architectures.
29
The selection of the phrase of identity management systems (contra identity systems) is not accidental; apart from
relating to global business trends it also signifies the existence of „back office‟ operations. The identity management system is an infrastructure that enables the management of identity – it transcends the boundaries of existing highly fragmented identification systems and standards such as the Social Security Number and the National Insurance Number to enable an efficient and integrated approach to necessary governance processes based on identity. 30
These tables do not illustrate all the characteristics of identity management technologies and processes; for a detailed analysis of the processes and technologies of identity management please revert to Appendix.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
26
Table : Identity Management Processes
Enrollment refers to the registration process and includes the application, biometric recording, application verification and ID card issuing sub-processes.
Identification refers to one or more elements of the identity of someone that uniquely identifies that user in a particular context
Authentication refers to the process used to verify that individual‟s association with an identifier
Authorisation refers to the way of determining whether the policy at the point of service allows an intended action to proceed
Our ultimate research objective was to examine and evaluate alternative technologies and processes
in order to provide a framework for identifying the socio political implications and issues emerging from the
proposed identity management scheme. The main findings of this socio political analysis, as presented in the
whitepaper are summarised in the following table.
Table : Research Findings
A. Technological Implications (Appendix p.)
In this category are implications arising from the implementation of the technological component of the identity management
scheme. The following central themes were analysed.
The implementation (reliability and accuracy) and privacy risks of biometrics The security and nature of RFID systems (ubiquity) Databases, data linkage and user consent The security of the IdM infrastructure The principles of privacy enhancing identity management systems (PE-IMS)
B. Process Implications (Appendix p.)
The process level implications are less straightforward. First we explored from an internal to the system viewpoint, the
emerging issues in the processes of authentication, identification and authorisation, such as the privacy risks raised by the
process of authentication in the UK ID Cards Scheme. Then we analysed the concepts of function and identification creep as
one of the most important factors of totalitarian control practices. Finally we examined the issues emerging from the process of
managing access to the system‟s resources (e.g. data leakage) and the notion of „practical obscurity‟.
C. Governmental Implications (Appendix p.)
In this category we discussed the financial and liability implications of the scheme .We argued that the cost of the scheme
may well exceed the initial estimations of the government and that there are costs associated with liability. Furthermore we
examined the various procurement considerations, especially those emerging from the national IdM system‟s implementation
and integration with other systems. We also discussed the closeness of the procurement processes from the side of the
government, and identified the issue of control over the PPPs as a critical factor.
D. Society-Citizen Implications (Appendix p.)
This perspective was the epitome of our study and presents an alternative perspective of the citizen in which he has some
expectations (for privacy, fairness and control over the use of information, confidentiality, etc). Furthermore, we linked identity
management directly to privacy locating six areas identity management where privacy concerns are raised. In addition, we
examined the very important issues of inclusion/exclusion in relation to vulnerable societal groups. Then we analysed the
issue of control over personal data and the associated issue of dataveillance of the digital identities. This analysis was linked
with the concept of circles of trust and federated identity management as alternative approaches that are more likely to enable
privacy protective practices.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
27
Finally, a major outcome of our research was the compilation of a number of essential conditions for the
successful implementation of national identity management in the UK, as in the following fishbone schematic.
Fig. : Fishbone Diagram showing a number of parameters to be taken into consideration in the development of IdM in the UK (adopted from whitepaper ‘Government Citizens and Identity Management’ pp. , 2004)
The performed socio political analysis can be seen as an effort to open up the debate of national
identity management as well as creating awareness to Accenture, the technology consultancy firm (for which
the research was done) of the design issues that must be considered in order to balance societal and
individuals‟ interests with the increased surveillance practices that the identity management system will
introduce. In the following section the author will present an analytics of government and the underlying
rationales that govern the identity management initiative in the UK.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
28
4.2 An Analytics of Government and Political Discourse
Identity and Access Management have been two globally emerging themes of the past decade that are
increasingly attracting the interest of nation-states and high-tech organisations. Nationwide identity
management systems open up new possibilities for the provision and management of services through the
surveillance of the population and as an unintended consequence, play a catalyst role in sustaining and
supporting a social control system that seems to be driven by an unending demand for information (through
which „panoptic sort‟ technologies can operate). In the following section some empirical evidence will be bolted
with secondary data and our interpretation of the context of the UK Id Cards Bill in an effort to examine the
emergent governmental modes of thought (as presented in ch.2).
The rest of this section is concerned with an interpretation of the specific conditions through which entities and
rationalities emerge, exist and change. In this way the author will synthesise the following two perspectives.
I. From the perspective of government studies, the author will investigate into the episteme and techne
dimensions of government (see Dean, 1999). The techne dimension of government analytics aims to
show the „technical‟ means and tactics through which the ends sought are realised, seen as a
manifestation of values, ideology and worldviews. The episteme dimension of analytics of government,
views practices of government in their complex and variable relations to the different ways in which
truth and modes of thought are produced in social, cultural and political practices.
II. From a Realpolitik perspective, it will be made evident that inside the microcosm of rationality-power
relations in the UK Id Cards Scheme, power does not necessarily seek knowledge but rather power
defines what counts as knowledge and rationality (see B.Flyvsberg, 2004)31
.
This will be done through an analysis of the following issues: 1.panic state regimes; 2.politics of reassurance;
3.private sector influence and PPPs; 4.the role of resistance groups and privacy enhancing technologies.
I would also like to stress the limitations of the approach. In brief, it is incomplete in that it is an impossible
(within the space limits and the available empirical data) analytical endeavour. The Realpolitik analysis would
require „richer‟ empirical data derived from interviews with the political forces of the scheme, of the study of
power relations in their historic context (the importance lies in that the rationalities produced are actively
formed and supported by the historically founded power relations and vice versa), as well as a view of the
project in its final form. However, the following sections aim at presenting an overview of the social conditions
and worldviews that have changed once again (after the terrorist acts and threats) to bring panoptic structures
again on the surface of modern government.
31
And the Baconian imperative „knowledge is power‟ is transformed into its inverse „power is knowledge‟.
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4.2.1 Panic State Regimes, the Politics of Reassurance and Knowledge
First and foremost, the attacks of September 11th 2001 in NYC and July 7
th 2005 in London have been
important events to shape a society of fear and direct state governance rationalities towards maximizing
security and fighting terror. The event has sociological interest that surpasses its definition as a simple
transformative device; it is also an „indispensable prism through which social structure and process may be
seen‟ (P.Abrams in Lyon, 2001). The events of 9/11 have brought into focus the „securitising functions‟
(Marlow, 2002) of modern politics, i.e. the political responses or supply to what is perceived as the public‟s
demand for security and a sense of safety in everyday life32
. However, while Identity management was
apparently proposed as an anti-terrorism measure, it has been made evident (see Lyon, 2001;
www.privacyinternational.org; also Appendix) that it is unclear whether it can actually combat any type of
terrorist activity. The public‟s fear was only further accentuated after recent terrorist acts, especially as
London33
remains one of the most frequently targeted cities around the world. The responses of panic state
regimes can also be seen as a general orientation towards strategies that foster the idea that prevention of
crime is possible; a techno-utopian goal of crime prevention that results in a categorical approach to population
surveillance.
My point is that in the UK, the identity management proposal emerged as a response to terrorist
coercion from a political leadership that wanted to show that they are doing their best in addressing the issue
of national security. Here the role of political leadership resembles to the shepherd‟s whose role is to ensure
the salvation of his flock. The similarity of the analogy is not only that the state does indeed recognise and act
to protect the security of its population but also that like the shepherd has a duty to keep watch of his flock
when it‟s asleep. The state in order to carry out its securitising functions must increase the surveillance of its
populace just as the shepherd „pays attention to them all and scans each one of them‟ (Foucault, 1981,
pp.229). The difference is that, in a way, political leaders, operating in a political „battleground‟, mainly want to
appear that they are solving the problem; their ultimate goal is not to lose the trust of the flock. These are the
politics of reassurance, also applying towards public sector inefficiencies. One of the reasons that the author
suggests is that public perception of fraud in government services in general presents a risk of eroding public
support and respect for the state government. This is best described as a culture of contentment, which in
essence is a „political market for that which pleases and reassures‟ (J.K.Galbraith in Marlow, 2002) – i.e.
politicians looking to indulge the majority of the voters. This culture of contentment (and governmentality of
reassurance) in Marlow‟s analysis is closely linked to the emergence of the risk society, as signified by a shift
from politics based on the solidarity of need to politics based on the solidarity motivated by uncertainty.
Political life today is constituted of and addresses the underlying principles of both of these theories.
This theme of exercise of political power is reinforced by a variety of rationalisations such that the
national and social security of the United Kingdom will be actually enhanced by biometric-enabled national
identity cards. It would be fair to say that government agencies‟ officials, during the period when fear was high
32
The UK identity management scheme is an instance of these securitising functions, affecting the evolution of social control in modern UK societies. 33
UK‟s capital has also attracted a threat of further bombing by Al Qaeda number two man in a recent filming that played on national television.
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among the public, purposively ignored the various studies and papers submitted to them by various
organisations and publicised in various academic journals. In support of this argument, is the fact that the
national identity cards were initially termed „Entitlement Cards‟, revealing a strategy that seeks to increase the
steering capacity of bureaucracy and transform the public services. When political and social interest shifted to
national security, so did the vocabulary related to the scheme (now termed national identity cards). In the
presented interpretation, the activity of government seemed to intentionally avoid to be informed by knowledge
and expertise that arose within the same cultural environment. The political approach of the nation state with
the support of the private sector, underscores that power defines rationality, as well as that it refines/adapts its
strategies and logic to produce them as a supplement to social needs, aspirations and values.
Finally, panic state responses (also including legislative efforts e.g. the Patriot Act) are likely to have
long term and possibly irreversible consequences. In an Ellulian sense, socio-technical systems once in place
are harder to dismantle than upgrade. Overall, the events of 9/11, the Spain bombing and the constant terrorist
acts in London seen as a prism to analyse aspects of social and governmental structures and processes
suggests three things: (1) the expanding range of surveillance practices that bring the body back into the game
as means of more reliable identification within the state, (2) the tendency of the state to rely on the
technological augmentation of its surveillance systems, supported by the private sector and (3) the increased
activity of privacy related groups and
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4.2.2 Private Sector Influence and the ‘Resistance Frontier’
Private Sector Influence and the Diffusion of Technological Innovation
As expected, a strong technological and industrial background supports the UK identity management
proposal (including some of the world leaders in high-tech and strategic consultancy34
). Private sector
influence is an essential determining factor of modern identity management schemes (Bennett, 1997; Rose,
1999) because private sector organisations have an interest in promoting technologies35
that have been
developed by their investment in research and development activities such as in the case of smart card
systems. In respect to the UK ID Cards scheme, the issues of the growing privatization of functions and the
increase of public-private partnerships (PPPs) are both important because they signify an overall change in the
mechanisms of governing. As understood, the art of state government has shifted towards a control paradigm,
where the nation-state is responsible for specifying requirements and controlling the plurality of
institutions/entities involved in governing, through processes of monitoring and audit. This shift in the way
governments manage their projects shows the manifestation of an enterprise culture, where partnerships and
outsourcing of functions is the most effective way in undertaking projects (whether they are „mission critical‟
e.g. the UK ID Cards Scheme or less significant e.g. road cleaning operations). This enterprise culture
pervading the boundaries of the nation-state governance is best seen in a whitepaper of Accenture that was
handed to the author termed „High Performance in Government‟, where indicatively the vocabulary used
included: „excellence‟, „performance‟, „citizen satisfaction‟ and „global leadership‟.
For private sector high tech organisations the diffusion of innovative technologies (in the day-to-day
routines) is a long term vision that unveils their worldview that can be said to include two points/objectives: (1)
to exploit the emergent new markets36
and (2) to create a technological environment in which the diffusion of
innovative technologies is „business as usual‟. Technological innovation (combined with the appropriate
promotion and numerous rationalisations) is presented as the answer to all social and organisational problems.
As a result of our research project we saw how these institutions counter and subvert the „rhetoric processes‟
of IdM initiatives – now security, identity management and overall stricter controls serve the appreciated needs
of citizen37
. Here I refer to the „visible‟ needs of the citizen in the form of more convenient access to services
and improved service delivery, as delineated in the Appendix and advocated by consultancy organisations.
The concept of trust is becoming an imperative of service organisations; there is a need to trust the customer38
in order to initiate tactics of individualised services and enhancing the individual‟s experience. These tactics
34
Accenture belongs to the organisational field of technology consultancy. 35
One case demonstrating this, is that of the president of Oracle who, immediately after the 9/11 NY attacks, offered the US Government free smart card software for a national IDM system (Lyon, 2001). Lyon suggests that it would be naïve not to think of the interests of Oracle (and other high tech organisations) in promoting technologies as the solution to problems (the diffusion of smart card is discussed elsewhere) as well as the future economic gains that they would have. 36
Not only in the way presented i.e. by the increased interest in high tech solutions; in the US, „experts‟ upon whom media called after the 9/11 were mostly representatives of high-tech organisations (Lyon, 2001). 37
The Accenture whitepaper „High Performance in Government‟ provides with a good example of how the subversion takes place; especially see the interpretation of their statistics of the citizen view. 38
His identity needs to be trusted as well as the other data; for example address information is critical for the operation of banks and energy organisations to continue offering a service.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
32
aim at rendering the individual (the consumer but also the citizen) more calculable and predictable to the
organisation and eventually increasing his dependence upon the organisation to perform a certain function for
him. This is reflected in the Accenture (Customer Data Management) analyst‟s words that their clients have
moved away from a phase of creating and using their customer base as a tool for the management of
customer relations and passed into a phase where their objective is to „strengthen existing customer bases‟.
By increasing the overall quality of their customer databases through access to the national identity register,
these organisations will be in a position to undertake new consumption and customer management tactics
(modern tactics of consumption and customer relation management entail risk management approaches,
predictive models and other data mining and knowledge discovery techniques) mainly interested in creating
and sustaining trusting relationship with the customers.
In addition, the Accenture representative that oversaw our work, when asked admitted that he was
unaware of the exact nature of Accenture‟s involvement. This certain ambiguity over the role of private sector
organisations that will bid for public private partnerships (PPPs) may root from the unclear nature of the
procurement processes. One may conclude that technology consultancy organisations, like Accenture, already
have the solution and are only interested in building a convincing business case for introducing a solution that
in most cases is based on technology (the ambiguity is therefore a result of the inexistence of an available
business case). The only request we had was to investigate multimodal biometric systems which represent, in
their various configurations, the solution to some of the problems related to the use of biometrics in a national
scale. Presumably this shows that Accenture‟s concern was how to prepare better a business/technological
case and scheme that would overcome the implementation risks (such as accuracy). In the consultancy‟s
approach the author recognises a certain opportunism apart from their approach to identity management as an
opportunity to maximize profits, build trusting relationships with the government and diffuse new technologies.
It is the case that the end defines the means while the justifications and cost benefit analyses can be
reconstructed, rationalised and adapted to the end convenient to the organisation.
Furthermore, there was a somewhat indifferent stance towards the socio political implications from the
part of the consultant. There is partially sufficient information to suggest that his indifferent behaviour was a
result of seeing the socio-political implications and issues as a low priority risk - if not advocacies of activistic
insanity - (the emphasis is primarily on risk, and secondarily on low priority) that can be managed, overcome
and given a solution, a technological solution. Current enterpreunal „modes of thought‟ promote the position
that technological solution can be given without sufficient reflection on the social implications, a task for which
is responsible the state. The state in panic regimes and if the influence of private sector is high, is at the other
end of the relationship acquiring the benefits of the new technology. It is logical to conclude that nation-states
where private sector influences and global technological leadership39
play an important role in a political
discourse characterized by panic regimes, are more likely to succumb to market forces that promote innovative
technologies.
39
For example, smart card technology diffusion presupposes a large scale project to be diffused in all societal levels (i.e. their integration in id cards is one such way). Smart cash cards efforts in the mid 1990s failed – they did not bring all the advantages expected by all stakeholders and thus failed to diffuse (see the instrumental application of technology drift and actor network theory to the case of Swedish cash cards ( J.Holstrom and F.Stadler, 2001).
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33
The Resistance Frontier and Privacy Enhancing Technologies
On the other hand, it is important to highlight the multiple „vocalities‟ of power that aim to increase
awareness, consult government officials and sometimes trigger active opposition to the UK identity
management initiative. So, resistance by an increasing number of non-profit organisations (The Joint
Committee on Human Rights, The Commission for Racial Equality, EPIC, Privacy International, Liberty
Alliance, the Bow Group) plays a peripheral nonetheless significant role. These institutions vary in the
methods/approaches they use to counter what they see as privacy invasive systems and technologies. One
such significant voice raising serious concerns over the government's plans has been the UK Information
Commissioner. Furthermore, activist groups forced criticism on both the means and ends40
of the proposed
identity management scheme – this reveals their perception of a perceived trade-off between human rights,
civil liberties, freedoms and security. Other responses included academic efforts, mainly represented through
reports released from the London School of Economics, that proposed different approaches to identity
management that avoid the use of biometrics and their centralization in a national database. Overall, these
independent institutional responses turn on a variety of concerns in their responses to the bill, as summarised
in the following table:
Table : Responses to the UK ID Cards Bill
A Financial Concerns – cost of the card may exceed £160, meaning that a number of low income families may not be able to afford them.
B Privacy Concerns – refer to the risk of creating a surveillance society depending on the uses that the national database will be put; a central theme is that of protection of anonymity
C
Human Rights Concerns – question the compatibility of the scheme with the European Convention on human Rights; especially the right to respect for private life (Article 8) and the right to non-discrimination (Article 14)
D Ethnic Minorities Concerns – while some discrimination issues may be eliminated, new discrimination forms may manifest
E Security Concerns – the security of the personal database as well as the smart id cards is questionable according to security experts.
F Implementation Concerns – refer to the viability of the technology; i.e. for example the technological practicability of large scale biometrics implementation
G Effectiveness Concerns – whether the scheme will satisfy its goals
H Vulnerable Individuals Concerns – whether the scheme will take under consideration vulnerable individuals and marginalised social groups
I Procurement Concerns – question the ability of the government to coordinate and manage successfully this large scale IT project (taking under consideration the history of failures/fiascos)
In any way their contribution is critical in (directly and indirectly) modifying the UK ID Cards Bill - since
they perform a visible and easily accessible (through the world wide web) evaluation of new technologies, state
proposals and practices - and in influencing political thought as well as the public about potential dangers,
unintended effects and discrimination issues. It is worth noting the growth and expansion of the activities of
these institutions – now they include organisations that instead of doing social and policy analyses of the
effects and the production of guidelines, perform research in technological architectures that take into account
individual and social interests. In addition to the aforementioned institutions, the UK Id cards Scheme has
resulted in the emergence of new opposition coalitions such as NO2ID (http://www.no2id.net/) and Defy-ID
40
In our report we propose different architectural models for the identity management scheme, as well as question the ability of the scheme to accomplish its intended outcomes. The LSE report also performs a similar but even more sensitive analysis.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
34
(http://www.defy-id.org.uk/). These campaigning organisations play a more active role in signing up individuals,
and raising fees for the protection of those individuals that will not register to the scheme (it is estimated that
by August 2005 they had gathered more than £100,000 for their cause as well as compiled a list of 10,000
individuals who have pledged to refuse to enroll with the scheme). Finally, these opposition coalitions enjoy
broad support from parties in the political left (such as Respect and the Green Party), the center (such as the
Liberal Democrats), and the right (such as the UK Independence Party), as well as civil liberties groups such
as Liberty and Privacy International41
. From the above, it is clear that, as any project of organisational change,
the IdM scheme takes place within a political battleground that comprises of a complex interplay of opposing
political rationalities, within a dense network of historically rooted power relations.
The aforementioned „resistance frontier‟, responded through a variety of solutions, some of which
direct attention to legal and social solutions (the LSE approach can be characterised as Luddite since it goes
against the logic of the Bill altogether by not discussing the use of biometric databases alltogether) and other
to technological solutions (e.g. the Liberty Alliance and our approach includes tangible privacy- protective
architectures). A technological type of response is privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), a concept that was
included in our analysis (see <appendix pp>) as a solution in terms of providing alternative, privacy protective
models of identity management infrastructure. PETs may aid the necessary societal transparency, while
preserving the right of anonymity and may enhance control over information, thus opening new possibilities for
the protection and promotion of privacy and privacy rights. Privacy-enhancing identity management systems
(PE -IMSs) base their operations on making the flow of information (i.e. in particular personal data)
transparent, while in parallel providing the user/citizen a large degree of control through the guiding principle of
„notice and choice‟.
By the use of such technologies, we argued, it is possible that good privacy practices manifest.
However the lacking political and economic interest to introduce such technologies and the relevant frame of
thinking can only be attributed to the fact that PETs do not acknowledge the political drives for domination or
exploitation. In support of this was the striking lack of knowledge of or interest in PETs from the part of
Accenture, when one would expect that this would be their major concern (considering the current political
climate and the heightened debate over the trade off between security and liberties/privacy). To date, the
technological solutions proposed (i.e. the R&D programme of Liberty Alliance) are not considered (officially) in
the architectural design of the identity management system.
41
A complete list of the supporters of NO2ID is provided at http://www.no2id.net/about/supporters.php.
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35
4.2.3 Concluding Remarks
As Zureik (2004 in Introna and Wood, 2004) suggests, biometric technologies have been inserted into
the agenda of many corporations and state agencies through a combination of „public fear, lobbying efforts of
the industry and linkages between political and economic interests‟. Underpinning these developments, a cost
benefit „logic‟. The higher the public fear (and thus greater demand for politics of reassurance), the lower the
resistance (from opposition groups that are directly involved into the debate of the privacy/security trade-off)
and the higher the political influence of political life by high tech organisations (and the related trusted
relationships built between state government and these organisations) leads to the facilitation of the diffusion
of technological innovation and increased reliance on technological solutions to remedy against problems of
our societies while in parallel building a capability for preventing new ones from arising. What is characteristic
of modern governmentalities is that the steady accumulation of justifications in cost-benefit terms is sufficient
to implement new or extend current data surveillance practices. If we take for granted the increasing
privatisation of state functions, state panic regimes are all more frequently countered by innovative
technological solutions42
. However, the introduction of the identity management scheme in the UK is
understood and promoted in different ways by the nation state and high tech organisations. The former insist
on the measure‟s efficiency in protecting national and social security by enforcing stricter controls at borders
and against potential dangers, whereas high tech organisations see national identity management as an
infrastructure for implementing a variety of processes that will make more efficient the delivery of services to
the whole of the population, with the potential of expanding the scope of the system and thus its benefits to
citizens as well as private organisations. Those rationalities and rationalisations involved in the strategies of
the different actors attach the necessary tone in the understanding of governmentality in this case –
technologies of domination wish to exploit the climate of fear by rationalizing political responses as measures
of national security, and not revealing the other end of their strategy which is the rationalisation and
enhancement of the administrative functions initially of the nation-state and in the future, of private sector
organisations.
The public‟s perception of identity management has been rendered as such that it can often be easier to
persuade by promoting the potential benefits of increased collection of personal information than it is to make
appreciate the risks.
42
Not only in the way presented i.e. by state desire to turn to high-tech solutions and increased number of PPPs; in the US, „experts‟ upon whom the media called after the 9/11 were mostly representatives of h igh-tech organisations (Lyon, 2001).
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36
Chapter 5: Late Modern Schemas of Government and Control
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
37
5.1 Synopsis
Based on the analytics of government as presented in the previous chapter43
as well as the literature
review (presented in chapter 2), the author has directly placed identity management as a conceptual element
of the more general modernization of (public and private) institutions. While the totalitarian and authoritarian
potential of identity management initiatives (including biometric identification and smart chips) is uncontested,
the author recognises that such initiatives in modern western European political systems are situated within the
context of advanced liberal democracies that are witnessing „a bewildering variety of developments in regimes
of control‟ (N.Rose, 2000). These include, the emergence of risk based regimes, strategies of crime
prevention, actuarialism and new forms of governing through information which can be thought of as a
transformation of the focus of institutional visibility fields from the present to the future (through novel modes of
collection and ordering of information – surveillance apparatuses -, and simulation apparatuses).
In this section the author will explore regimes of control in a dichotomised environment; one that puts forward
the securitising functions of modern nation-states (the airport) and another in which advanced liberal
governance proliferates (the welfare state - actuarialism). This will be used as a platform to suggest that the
modernization of regimes of control has two dimensions:
(1) the emergence of informational networks or scapes and the associated control of virtual flows
(2) the metamorphosis of bureaucratic administration based on risk rationalities and the concept of
actuarialism as a prevailing mode of government
The author will then argue that regimes of control in late modern societies are an amalgamation of disciplinary
and „post disciplinary‟ control practices, maintaining some of the characteristics of Bentham‟s Panopticon as
well as introducing new elements.
This thesis does not contrast historical oriented studies of how subjects are formed, that suggest an
„oscillation‟ between different practices of control depending on the historically situated cultural circumstances
that give rise to them, but rather affirms them by establishing the UK Id Cards Scheme within a broader „frame‟
of technologies of government. These technologies as the author will discuss, link together modes of
perception, practices of calculation, architectural forms as well as technological means (including both software
and hardware „devices‟) into modern institutionalised systems such as the welfare system, the policing system,
the airport and the penal system (Rose, N.2000), and eventually constitute what Deleuze sees as „societies of
control‟.
43 From which the author hopes it has become clear that the general context in which governmentality manifests itself and operates is danger and uncertainty. From those who are enemies (e.g. terrorist groups, other organised criminals, etc) or who may become enemies, those who cannot take care of themselves (the social welfare state) as well as those who may require a service.
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38
5.2 Networks, Passage Points and Exclusion/Inclusion Circuits in the Airport
The identity management infrastructure allows one to think of the identity cards as internal (to the state
territory) passports. This is not to suggest that the state and other service providers have the ability to enforce
large-scale regulatory validations of the identity tokens and the direct biometric identification of the cardholder
(though indeed such a possibility emerges, and thus the authoritarian potential of the technology) – but rather
that the infrastructure enables the same type of information web or network to be created as in the airport. Its
characterisation: invisible, consisting of nodes, flows and carefully arranged centres of calculation (to use
B.Latour‟s expression) and incorporating strategies of deterrence as much as discipline. Airports, in which
sociological interest has not been limited, have been characterized as non-places stripped from any meaning
and social interaction (M.Auge, 1995 IN P.Adey, 2003), spaces of flows of vacuous sociality (Castells, 1996) or
even completely spaceless and analogous to motorways. Though a negative tone underlies the
aforementioned descriptions, it is easy to „extract‟ their emphasis on mobility; the airport as a space of flows.
Passports and checkpoints enable a constancy of processes that check identity, position, legitimacy, assess
and manage risks, direct flows, exclude, facilitate or slow down, and grant access to individuals from multiple
ethnic and other backgrounds. The airport is a space (non-place) where mobile individuals (identities) are
surveilled and managed effectively44
- so the airport can be seen as an instructive type of well-tested security
and flow management paradigms45
. In essence, the airport has become a significant expression of the
governance of mobility. Within and between airports there operates an active network integrating into its
dynamic structure nodes where identities and profiles are processed to some end. The passenger therefore
takes two trips when she walks into a non-place: the overt and the covert trip. Of interest to sociology is the
latter, because the overt depends upon the covert trip, therefore signifying that the management of human
multiplicities has moved to the virtual or hyperreal.
One of the defining characteristics of contemporary societies are diverse mobilities of people, objects,
images and information46
. Individuals‟ identities are validated and authenticated, multi-layer access rights
authorized, individual information is processed and transferred creating an underlying web of structures and
flows in a well-calculated socio-technical utopia, while interaction-related information is generated and
recorded. The complex assemblage of data surveillance and discrimination in this context is always directed
towards finding the deviant object-subject (object of interest of data surveillance and subject to the real
discrimination impacts) through database systems and their interconnection at multiple points of passage or
checkpoints (human equipped or not) where the individual/dividual presents himself, or better, his identity
44 Effectively here signifies accordance to the objectives of the airport as institution – security being one of the most important objectives. Biometric systems are increasingly considered and adopted in major airports through the incorporation of biometric identifiers in passports, aiding in their (the airports‟) securitisation. 45 Individuals‟ need to travel is non-negotiable and therefore they willingly play their role in the aforementioned processes and as a result, social and class differences emerge in the airport as a place of „uneven global flows‟ (Lloyd, 2002 IN P.Adey, 2003). 46 Mobility has been defined as one of the major drivers of identity management (see appendix) but here applies to a variety of actants and not just humans.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
39
information or his profile/database self to access another resource47
; automatic updates of data will ensure that
each individual corresponds to one and only one - legitimate to perform an action – „digital persona‟. The
generated information (trails) are immediately gathered and added to this digital persona or profile, enabling
strong evidence of the interaction of the individual at the node (trails can include much more than a timestamp
and a location), and showing the growing ‘tendency’ of the digital personae. In parallel to moving from
checkpoint to checkpoint until one reaches the airplane and then his final destination, the dividual is moving on
the background in parallel with him to „accompany‟ the individual at the various checkpoints, even at the
destination airport (the covert trip), guaranteeing security and enabling an environment of control. This
engineering of human activity falls inside the securitisation logic and functions of the airport system, aiming at
producing a place of phenomenical freedom within defined boundaries as well as generating points of
exclusion. These processes were designed and engineered in terms of the physical conditions and recreated
from their model to optimise the direction of flows towards pre defined areas (e.g. towards shopping malls)48
.
But apart from the engineering of the physical conditions now the flows and the business processes
themselves are engineered in order to meet the defined institutional goals and ultimately define a space of
reason about the future for the institution.
As we have seen in the literature review, surveillant assemblages are apparatuses of social division,
facilitating exclusionary goals. Exclusion at the airport is, in the words of P.Virilio, „dromological‟ meaning that
its practices are performed based on the principle of speed49
. It can be said that this exclusion is based on the
institutional conceptions of how trusted an individual is (passengers are evaluated in terms of frequency of
travel, miles travelled, other actual behaviours/conducts but also ethnical background and identity related
information). What happens is that these individuals are trusted more because more is known about them by
the institutions (airline firms), on the background of any interaction50
. By pre-emptively simulating trusted
passengers‟ characteristics, preferences, destinations and identities in customer information bases these
organisations can build trust with the individual. This population management process leads to (1) an
exclusionary process aiming at the prevention of risk, (2) a platform to rationalise customer and service
management, as well as (3) benefits for these „trusted‟ individuals. Regarding the latter, simulation in contrast
to surveillance does not try to create the norm but is rather a strategy of disinclination aiming at keeping
individuals bounded with the norm, through the perceived benefits they enjoy such as safety, convenience,
47 Here the author does not wish to emphasise the complexity of the layers or levels of access; a given system can be as straightforward as the context within which it is used suggests. Technology will not increase quantitatively the complexity of neither the systems nor our lives. 48 Anyone who has travelled in Japan sees how this „model‟ works. The roads are not good enough to direct consumers to shops safely so new roads - that are surveilled by CCTV cameras that count the number of individuals- above ground level have been created in the city centre to link shopping centres, aiming to redirect flows. Within this environment, the aim is to anticipate and prevent any type of deviant behaviour and even choice of movement is managed and anticipated (and therefore not exercised freely). 49 Premier travellers are trusted and trusted individuals can be processed more intelligibly, more conveniently and faster – as long as they have been categorically defined as suspicious (and through data mining operations) fitted a cluster or low risk category. The rest of the population to be managed propose higher risk to the institution and therefore must pass through explicit and strict identity and luggage control processes. 50 This refers to the fact that except of the conscious regulation at the centres of calculation the network extends to organisational processes of classification and risk management, that constitutes passengers as trusted or not, operating at a space/time far away from the interaction, in the past-future.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
40
speed of passage etc. And as realised the institutional fabric is made up of risk rationalities as will be
discussed in the following section.
This type of interaction described can be instructive for post modern social life. The regulation of
mobility is the task of the airport; however the effect of the network is not only located in the airport because
the benefits of such dynamic structures can be ripped by a diverse variety of institutions. Contra Orwell‟s
Oceania, there is no need to think of centralised power, but rather a multiplicity of power centres operating at
the periphery, „feeding upon‟ institutionalised interactions (which as many commentators on the subject
suggest increasingly mediate social life) but mainly operating on the basis of risk management practices.
These networks on the one hand presuppose overt or covert surveillance practices on embodied individuals
but on the other hand operate in virtuality where flows are created and individuals‟ future conduct simulated.
Within this frame of reasoning, I want to argue that in the short and in the long run we will witness a
proliferation of conceptual webs and networks51
in which individuals and dividuals are processed, validated
and updated. The aim of this web of flows is to ensure that the dividual becomes more accurate, more
calculable and therefore more future oriented actions/decisions can be taken based on it52
. In other words we
observe a proliferation of efforts of legitimisation of the process of control of simulated dividuals (as means of
social control). Networks, flows and simulation models create a control environment in which the aim is to
render discipline unnecessary. For example, individuals in the airport know what is expected of them - what is
the norm - and act with a certain pleasure in the airport termed by P.Virilio as „theatre of regulation‟ (P.Virilio,
1989)53
. In terms of the dialectic of technologies of domination and technologies of the self, docility and
contentment is the behaviour produced in human multiplicities that follow the same, repetitive regulation
procedures in a simulated environment (both at the architectural and process level), in their non-negotiable
claim to fly and the covert trip, a necessary accompaniment to such claims.
51 In the UK Id Cards Bill the cost of the identity card and biometric readers is expected to reach £300 million only for those used by public sector agencies. These readers will create a flow of information exchange between the national identity register and the local service provider (the information system running there, which is a passage point similar to the check-in desk in the airport and the till in the supermarket). 52 Institutional control at its core encourages the constant accumulation of information (through which actionable knowledge can be „extracted‟) to solve the organisational and technological problems. For example, smart identity cards are a solution that aim at the creation of non-spaces where the management of „scapes and flows‟ (to use the concept of Urry) is the primary objective. 53 Increasingly surveillance in these spaces is becoming automated and „cyborgic‟: the count of people passing through doors, the change of signs and symbols, the programming of doors to act in different ways.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
41
5.3 Risk Rationalities, Actuarialism and Government Through Information
As seen from the above exploration of control at the airport, co-presence is not a fundamental
condition for the coordination of social life in mobile, fast societies; it can automatically be exercised through
networks and codes of classification that decide upon (not socially-negotiated) binaries of eligibility, access,
trust, etc. In parallel, through the extension of surveillance, administrative and commercial services can be
provided conveniently (to the user, citizen), security can be enhanced, and knowledge about risks can be
generated. The UK Id Cards Bill is presented as the means to prevent terrorism, minimise the risk of identity
related fraud, combat organised crime and enforce border control, that will happen the argument suggests,
because the system will be able to discriminate between the evil-doing and the legitimate citizen populations.
Furthermore, as it has been demonstrated in section 4.2 a „big turn‟ of modernity is that society‟s needs and
the emerging risks are not answered solely by the nation-state, but by a multiplicity of „enterprises‟ including
institutions (e.g. localities, firms, hospitals, schools) and individuals54
. This has indicated a shift towards new
forms of actuarial or insurance-based government where governmentalised risk rationalities and risk
management approaches to service administration flourish55
. In this section the aim will be to thematise risk
and responsibility in modern modes of government, through a discussion of the actuarial management
practices in the welfare state that are however generalisable to or signifying for other institutions including the
airport and other private sector organisations.
This responsibilitisation of the self and the promotion of self reliance and self empowerment (an effect
of the enterprise culture as seen in the previous chapter e.g. as in the unemployment entitlement provision –
see P.Henman, 2004) it is argued, goes hand in hand with the invention of new strategies of government
through information and high levels of visibility to define modern governmentality. It is therefore apparent that
both institutions and individuals are becoming partners in sharing responsibility. By sharing responsibility they
share risk and (consciously as well as unconsciously) become partners in the processes and practices of its
management. In the case of welfare administration, the identity management scheme aims at eliminating the
current financial losses of the government by disallowing fraudulent claims for benefits to be administered as
well as at calculating benefits and entitlements. This type of control comprises of a variety of technologies and
apparatuses to accept and share responsibility and risk embodying the political and economic imperatives of
advanced liberal rationalities. The most well known and widely diffused risk-based technology is associated
with profiles. Profiles can be used to classify individuals through some risk calculus to risk categories, through
an evaluation process mediated by the citizen-institution interaction. Everyone is initially categorically defined
as suspicious, as a possible threat (for identity related fraud) and then the system can label and exclude a
population by modeling them on top of the various pre-defined risk profiles (but which can be also dynamically
defined through the attributes of the data set – for a summary of data mining techniquesi please revert to the
end of this chapter). The surveillance and simulation assemblage is thus impersonal and directed categorically
towards all of the population. Through risk based rationalities, past transgressors‟ profiles and/or attributes
54 This narrative of the reconstruction of culture in to what has been termed the „enterprise culture‟, advocate of which has been not only M.Thatcher but also T.Blair (see M.Peters, 2001 pp.63), is based on a vision of the future sustained by enterprise, excellence and performance, where all actants‟ choices are rational. 55 These include, forms of privatized actuarialism (or prudentialism) in which the „entrepreneurial self‟ (M.Peters, 2001) is a responsibilitised individual and risk management is articulated as his everyday practice.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
42
essentially have predictive power in identifying future transgressors56
, by simulating their characteristics. Risk
discourses therefore embody a calculative logic based on statistical methods that segments populations and
calculates/assigns risk values by inducing individual‟s profiles subject to social division mechanisms (or
panoptic sort technologies). This is how knowledge is used in welfare government accentuating the motif „to
rule efficiently it is necessary to rule in light of knowledge of the subject that rule is exercised upon‟ or
government through information (N.Rose, 1999). Then the options of the treatment or service administered can
be customized accordingly, in an infinite number of ways also truly enabling the „enterpreunal‟ imaginary of
total individualization (but most commonly categorisation) of the service/product/treatment57
. Biometric
identification and identity authentication therefore becomes integral to the risk management apparatus by
increasingly making the individual more accurate (through biometrics, address, medical information) implicitly
aiding in processes of magnification of (in)dividuals‟ differences in order to achieve greater precision in the
commodification of entitlements/products/services as well as enable exclusion/inclusion circuits, in an actuarial
or insurance type of managing human multiplicities.
In this context, the UK identity management scheme aims at rationalising administration and
management through the institutionalisation of a reliable process of validation of the one-to-one relationships
between the identity card, the citizen, his profile at the government agency, and his record at the national
identity register. In other words, the welfare state, through actuarial practices, maximises its capability for
operational efficiency by fitting the service/benefit to the citizen which can only be achieved through (a
mechanism of) understanding his current risk position and aiming to anticipate his future (risk position). All
claims and identities of the claimants must be processed in such a way ensuring that the risk of fraud as well
as the risk of providing an „unfittng‟ service (seen in the context of employment entitlement strategies) are
prevented and minimised. In this respect, data matching and risk profiling techniques are widely adopted58
to
serve a variety of management objectives59
including (a) assuring that ineligible applicants are not given costly
program benefits, (b) detecting fraudulent claims and deterring others from defrauding the program as well as
(c) improving program policies, procedures and control. The aim of advanced liberal welfare management is to
use the expert and actuarial assessments of potential risks (and thus profiles) before costly harms occur, a
practice that has been first legitimized as a condition of profit in the organisational field of insurance companies
(see R.Ericson et. al., 2000). The exclusive objective, addressed through circuits of exclusion and inclusion, is
to stimulate behaviours that are favourable to the effective functioning of the institution. On the other hand, the
subjects‟ beliefs, social status (as traditionally conceived) and thoughts are to some degree irrelevant to the
operation of the technologically mediated processes of the UK ID Cards Bill.
56 The profile is not only used to define the characteristics of someone but also to denote the type of people who are more likely than the rest of the population to fit a category. 57 This can be traced back to the empirical data presented in the previous chapter (the Accenture liaison argued that their clients have moved away from a phase of creating and using their customer base as a tool for the management of customer relations and passed into a phase where their objective is to „strengthen existing customer bases‟); surveillance and simulation are used to restore trust in social relations of anonymity in the modern metropolis. The use of biometric enabled identification is a further stage of surveillance practices tending towards the elimination of conditions of anonymity altogether, extending the visibility fields of institutions. 58 The associated practices are not something new; sociological research in the welfare state (for an analysis of surveillance and the Australian welfare state employment services, see P.Henman, 2004), the policing systems and of course business sector operations has shown that organisational practices concur to this same logic. 59 They are indeed management objectives and not administration objectives, confirming another characteristic of advanced liberalism, the new managerialism and so called „New Public Management‟ (Rose, 1999).
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
43
As discussed, risk based approaches to profiling in a technologically-mediated individual-institution
interaction scenario, in essence aim at enabling (a) the tracking of identities through time, space (and most
importantly choices), (b) the inscribing of norms and values of behaviour on to these identities (dividuals), as
well as (c) the prediction of attributes denoting their future conduct60
. We can conclude that, actuarial regimes
differ from disciplinarian which seek to normalise individuals (altering their behaviour as well as motivation), in
that they aim to regulate levels of deviance (N.Rose, 1999) as specified by the risk calculus and do so by
altering the physical and social structures in which the individual behaves. Being preoccupied with the human
soul is unnecessary in actuarial regimes, the focus of which as shown has become the (recorded) actual and
(simulated) future conduct as much as the social and physical conditions that enable it. The logic of prediction
surpasses the logic of diagnosis.
60 This is the constitution of advanced liberal government modes of thought, increasingly pervading contemporary public and private institutions and the lives of individuals; on the one hand to prevent and preempt and on the other to automate and calibrate the administering functions.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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5.4 Designing Modern ‘Diagrams of Control’
First we saw how network dynamics and the simulation and surveillance assemblage operate through
centres of calculation or passage points. Next the author elaborated on actuarial practices and risk rationalities
as a metamorphosis of modern governmental modes of thought and the exercise of power. It is argued that
these two analyses, complement each other in understanding contemporary government and control. The first
suggests the emergence of dynamic structures on which institutional relationships increasingly depend upon
for their survival and functioning, whereas the latter puts forward the modes of thought underpinning the
modernisation of institutions of the modern era. Together they create a perfect „environment‟ in which all the
components of institutional relationships can be formed, denoting a certain structural and strategic coherence
between these two ways of thinking and acting upon human conduct. In this section the author argues that
practices of simulation, performed in the background, are practices of prevention and deterrence that
progressively complement disciplinary practices as modus operandi of establishing, sustaining order and
managing the activities of populations.
The transformation of organisational visibility fields to foresight and the general orientation to
anticipation of the future through the emergence of risk rationalities and the use of simulation models can
therefore be seen as both comprising of and producing two modes of knowledge: knowledge extracted from
surveillance of the individual and knowledge produced from her simulation. What does that show for modern
societies? In a Baudrillardian sense these simulation models do not flow towards their end, but from their end
(their simulation). What happens in front-end activities where risk profiles are used for example, is that reality
does not test the model but rather the simulation (the model) tests reality and becomes the „signifier or
reference‟ (Baudrillard, 1983 in Bogard, 1996) with all the negative and positive ramifications that this may
imply for modern societies. Informational networks of late modernity are therefore third order simulacra; this
stage of the evolution of the image according to Baudrillard is one where the circulation and evaluation of signs
and images have the function of concealing the absence of a reality from the representation. The reality that
individuals cannot be simulated perfectly due to an inability (of passage points [covert or overt] where the
surveillant apparatus is in operation) to „capture‟ desires, motivations, beliefs and overall the psychological
construction of the subjects. Masking the absence of the reality that individuals are not categorised based on
their risk values and essentially don‟t have any, as well as the reality that they are irrational and is impossible
to project their behaviour and thereafter their psychic synthesis into the future.
The organisational framework that makes this possible, as seen, involves a general orientation
towards increased precision in service delivery. As presented, the predicted or calculable attributes (inherent in
risk management practices) are perceived to be as important as the „extracted‟ and are indicative of the nature
of evolution of modes of subjectification. The subjects‟ beliefs, social status (as traditionally conceived) and
thoughts are to some degree irrelevant to the operation of the technologically mediated processes of the UK ID
Cards Bill. In this respect I would like to agree with Lianos in that control is not about subjectification but
increasingly about the de-subjectification of the individual (Lianos, 1993) – and deviant forms of behaviour,
outstripped from their evaluative context, become a dysfunction of the system addressed in a similar way to
other functional or financial problems and risks (for example, shoplifting is an example of deviant behaviour
that is now addressed in the same way as long queues and uncompetitive prices). A following observation is
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
45
that as the system becomes more reliable, sophisticated, powerful and secure, calculations become
increasingly uncontested as facts; they are more objective than seeing because the system‟s output cannot be
prejudiced, cannot be biased and „cannot be false‟. Technology strengthens the proof of the evidence. The
question of scientific indetermination that arises from this argument is in practice cast away because if
scientific investigation is indeterminate it is deprived of any causal force61
(see Andrejevic, 2005).
This portrays the underlying logic: reality (or should one say actuality) can be simulated, while neither
surveillance nor institutional effects are virtual. The imaginary of absolute control is only realisable in virtuality
(or hypereality since it is used to make real decisions). The institutional needs for risk minimization and
prevention, existent within environments where information is managed, usually leads to both strategies of
improving surveillance and enhancing the simulation technologies (through the improved data collection
mechanisms that complement and support the rationality of simulation62
). It logically follows that the imaginary
of unlimited surveillance that would allow the system to self-augment, in la technique‟s logic, is only realizable
or actual in simulation63
. If the imaginary of surveillance is perfect exposure and that of simulation is the perfect
doubling according to Bogard64
, the imaginary of the simulation of surveillance then becomes the prefect
double of exposure or absolute virtual actuality. The effect produced and that desired is the understanding of
the future, its simulation. Then the conditions shaping the conduct of human multiplicities as well as the
administration mechanisms can be reorganised so that the unwanted outcomes do not manifest at all or
manifest themselves in an anticipated way, inside the boundaries of the system (and thus inside its preventive
and anticipatory functions). „Furhung‟ or power as guidance therefore takes a different meaning when studied
through the lens of the simulation apparatus. It is the constant communication, support but also subversion
between surveillance and simulation that enable the modern constitution of subjects based on relationships of
power and knowledge. This interrelationship of simulation and surveillance can lead into what can be said to
be an environment that needs no control because it is pure virtual control, because simulation‟s objective is to
create the virtual spaces and time over which control is exerted, risk values recalculated and new flows of
information created. Power is most effective when it is less obtrusive or when it hides itself, i.e. in simulation
and actuarial practices.
This does not mean that the author promotes an image of modern control based on the totalisation of
surveillance. The discussion about control as presented in the previous paragraphs should be understood as
operating within networks, at passage points and through inclusion/exclusion circuits. In modern regimes of
61 We are all familiar with the intelligence that was used to „trigger‟ war on Iraq. The intelligence showed that there is a chance that there are weapons of mass destruction which in the political process became a certainty. That confirms the thesis of the author that intelligence in risk discources is used towards satisfying the uncertainty, and in the case of the US to trigger a preventive war against an inexistent threat. However the political drives behind such actions cannot be ignored (i.e. the political interests in petrol, etc..). 62 Bogard argues for four types of relations of subversion and support between simulation and surveillance (see Bogard, 1996 : pp.81) 63 The case of flight simulation is the best example of total virtual control. In any case the history of the battleground according to major post modern commentators is a field of the transformation of perception (see Virilio, 1989) 64 Here Bogard refers to ecstasies and not actual or realisable strategies, and thus any understanding of the concepts mentioned requires the thinker to think in terms of the imaginaries, where the imaginary stands for a zone of fantastic solutions (1996 : pp.46). He also argues that the gap between the real and the imaginary is narrowing (ibid: pp.181) – telematic societies do not aim at simply eliminating this gap but at absorbing it in simulation (i.e. simulating the differences)
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
46
control, surveillance is „‟designed in‟ to the flows of everyday life‟ (N.Rose, 2000) or „designed in‟ the
conceptual networks as described in section 5.1. In these networks, several orbits are generated, and the
individual becomes a dynamic node65
whenever she participates in institutionally mediated interactions or
whenever she „interfaces‟ with the institution (e.g. needs not be the institution, but a non human-equipped
technological device such as the ATM). Deleuze in his thesis about the emergence of „societies of control‟,
argues for the displacement of disciplinary diagrams that involved (through procession from one disciplinary
institution to another) the shaping of conduct through the inscription of values into the human soul. Societies of
control involve the relentless modulation of the individual through practices that are designed in the daily
activities in which she participates (Deleuze, 1995). This modulation corresponds to data surveillance and
simulation practices (through risk based profiles, digital personae or dividuals) in contemporary societies, as
presented in section 5.2. It is argued that within modern regimes of control, there needs not be any
interpellation because the embodied individual is increasingly left out of the decisions that are taken about him.
Does that mean that the world is reconstructed without individuals‟ interpellation and consequently consent?66
For answering this question we must return to the concept of the network and analyse the ways in which the
individual becomes the node because it is in these interfaces or passage points that the individual faces his
digital persona in which both the individual and the system „recognise‟ the embodied person. But it is important
to recognise that simulation is not a virtual process; it is a process in which the imaginary and the real coincide
(Bogard, 1996) aiming to make the gap between virtual and actual control disappear. The seductive effect of
precision is driving this development, while risk based rationalities sustain it and social conditions such as
public fear and the uncontested need for better services (at least true for the „middle class‟) comprise the social
supplement. Pushing the control functions to their imaginary limits, it can be argued that control (paradoxically)
wishes the elimination of passage points or better the integration of the passage point onto the body, in a not
so distant (fictional or hyperreal) future.
The inclusion/exclusion circuits that emerge, as we have seen are dependent upon the data double or
digital persona for various reasons relating to bureaucracy and economic benefits associated with government
at a distance. The author would like at this point to add the final element of his conceptualization of regimes of
control. That is that these models are strategies of deterrence (not in their ideology but in their practice) or
sustained disinclination, aiming to dissuade67
. The creation of profiles of „typical‟ offenders in our case (though
the example of nuclear war, in which deterrence is most commonly analysed, is more instructive because its
exercise avoids mutual annihilation, i.e. it pushes the concept to its limits), aims at deterring law abiding
citizens (and not criminal) from departing from a form of conduct that is beneficiary to the institution. As we
have seen, in the airport the embodied individual creates an awareness of what is expected of him
behaviourally and shifts his actions to fit that „image‟. This awareness that the individual creates is about the
image of the offender that the she wants to avoid in order to fulfill her need (for traveling, receiving the
entitlement, etc). In other words, late modern exclusionary mechanisms and simulation (e.g. digital personae)
are strategies that aim at creating disinclination to approach a not beneficial to the institutional norm (as form
of conduct), and maintain their current position towards the system.
65 This has been portrayed in science fiction literature (P.K.Dick, „Simulacra‟; W.Gibson, „Neuromancer‟), where individuals „plug in‟ cyber networks as part of their everyday life. 66 This calls for further research. 67
Bogard while had attempted in his early work (Bogard, 1991) to create a theory of deterrence and discipline, in his later seems to work abandon it (Bogard, 1996).
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
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The presented approach to the analysis of networks and actuarialism attempts to bring together
studies of surveillance and simulation, in the context of government and control. Let me conclude by picking
out several interrelated features of modern regimes of control, as justified through the above analysis, that
support my thesis. The UK Id Cards Scheme is an instance of strategies interested in identifying individuals to
enable the institutional administration or management apparatuses to enter a new stage. This stage is
characterised by the purification of the information bases of public and private service providers and the
emergence of a „network logic‟ for the access of resources based on identity information. Control at this level
(the author says „at this level‟ here because he will return on that issue on the following chapter) therefore
becomes both the rationale and the outcome of the institutional-individual relationship, and is integral to this
relationship. This can be situated at a general institutional orientation towards creating trust between the
interacting parties and can be conceived as a necessary and beneficial side effect of service provision. When
the individual interfaces with the institution, she becomes a node in the network and for the time she is the
node her digital persona is in a transitory phase. These nodes, that complement spaces of apparent freedom,
are centres of calculation, and manipulate both individuals and their corresponding digital personae, thus
enabling a covert trip to take place. A necessary component of this control is the fragmentation of the social
environment aiming to effectively distinguish between the legitimate and the illegitimate, taking the morphe of
binaries (but its imaginary tends towards complete individualization), signifying that this is done increasingly
through reductionistic images of the embodied self. The resultant circuits of inclusion/exclusion are therefore
built in the activities of institutionally mediated social life, are based on past actual conduct but also on
calculated potentialities, and are increasingly performed through the code as part of a more general and
growing trend of precision and objectification. The codification of processes of social division and detection
results in the erosion of traditional norms by embodying them into non-negotiable constraints (i.e. through
processes of inscription (see B.Latour, 1992) homogeneous and equal to all. Therefore social negotiability can
be said to implode in the codification and instrumentalisation of institutional policies.
The surveillance and simulation apparatus is categorical in its nature and its methods can be
perceived to be external to the social world (much of this process happens at a different time/space in the
network and therefore away from the awareness of the individual). What is more, these circuits have a
deterrent nature aiming not only to stimulate but to stabilise behaviour around an embodied norm that is
favoured by the institutional practices. As a result, it can be argued that the „good‟ distributed by identity cards
is that of mistrust; the cards not to be used for the positive assessment of a holder against a set of norms but
for detecting and preventing individuals from breaching them. The rationality underpinning such an approach to
the management of services is risk-based and future-oriented and aim at regulating levels of deviance as well
as preventing unfavourable forms of conduct. Therefore it is associated to risk in two levels: first the high level
of risk rationalities and second the risk management practices, both supporting each other and sustaining
themselves in continuous spirals of a risk-knowledge dialectic. The first aims at the definition of problems as
organisational and the necessary adoption of a strategy to solve the problem (i.e. seen in the role of politicians
as risk managers). This risk culture is characterised by uncertainty and is open to the construction of new
problems and the marketing of new solutions (as seen in chapter 4). The second, includes risk profiling
operations that aim at evaluating and classifying individuals/dividuals by means of simulation of their
probabilities of future conduct based on specific current activities and a surveillance apparatus able to provide
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
48
the necessary information68
. This depicts that current management rationalities have become preoccupied with
the future or with a logic of prediction of the unwanted outcome. Therefore, while Foucault‟s disciplinary
societies aim at certainty and the correction of behaviour, modern societies aim through the randomisation of
potential outcomes and assessment of risks at the pre-emption of future situations and at the increase of
stabilisation of embodied norms.
For Foucault the prison was the appropriate institution for the study of the organisation of life, the
management of multiplicities and arrangement of time, spaces and distances in order to show the fiction of
control. It has been argued that in late modernity, it is the study of the airport and the welfare state that is
instructive in understanding the operation of technologies of power and the fiction of control.
68
However the relation between the surveillance and the simulation apparatus is not as simple as it seems because the simulation apparatus itself creates flows of data and provides them to data surveillance practices. This distinction is critical to the precise incorporation of simulation into the study of surveillance and control.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
49
Chapter 6: Epilogue
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
50
In this paper the author concentrated on empirical evidence (chapter 4), and elaborated on the ways in
which power defines economic and social reality itself. It was mentioned that power does not seek knowledge;
power seeks change (in accordance to the work of B.Flyvsberg, 2004). In order to do that it produces the
knowledge that is conductive to the reality it wants. This was shown through the reluctance of the Accenture
consultant to consider the socio political implications as well as his ignorance towards privacy enhancing
technologies. In addition, the author argued that the nation-state as well as private organisations ignored
certain types of knowledge (coming from activist and other opposition groups) in favour of their strategies
based on the concept of precision. This ability to facilitate or suppress knowledge and thus to define reality and
rationality is how power manifests itself through a multiplicity of agents of governance. The collaboration of
private and state institutions to fight against social and political risks emerging currently from terrorism and
inefficient bureaucratic mechanisms for administering individuals is part of advanced liberal modes of
government. So it is argued, advanced liberalism is the political supplement to the growing surveillant and
simulation apparatuses, whereas the inscription of constant uncertainty to the public is the unconscious social
supplement to the evolving technologies of government. In this respect, the creation/manipulation of profiles
and the subsequent projection of these profiles into the future through risk calculations, means that the late
modern technologies of government are concerned with the immediate past to anticipate the future. This mode
of government has been criticised for the transformation of the state from care taking to management (based
on risk rationalities and practices) that redefine the boundaries of democracy. The emergent late modern
diagram of control comprises of a dialectic and interrelationship between informational panoptics and
simulation apparatuses with the difference to Foucault‟s disciplinary societies being that the focus is not mainly
on normalising the psychological construction of the subjects but rather simulating and shaping the conditions
around them bringing individuals in a situation where they are disinclined to depart from a, beneficial to the
institution, norm.
On an even more theoretical level, it can be argued that the late modern „fantasy of power‟ is to create
a circular process of producing classes of cases in order to decide on the administrative policies that the
institution will apply. In the process there manifests an endless cultural commitment to social transformation via
(ever-augmented) technological progress69
and means. That is because new means, beyond offering solutions
to current needs (as discussed in the previous chapter and in appendix) may generate new needs and may
even determine ends. This viewpoint suggests that new means that usually come along technological
innovation70
eventually lead to the redefinition or re prioritization of need. An example is that of risk prevention,
that according to my view, will prevail in the future in most organisations because of the recognised economic
and efficiency gains involved in its ends. The risk preventive or risk avoidance culture that is admittedly
becoming incorporated into and diffused throughout social and corporate modes of thought can be, in part,
attributed to the development and perfection of means. Moreover, when a socio technical system is stabilized
within a network of actors, it is subject to processes of mutual shaping. These processes further determine the
integration of the identity management system into the social structures, and are therefore of outmost
importance. When they are diffused into society however, they „instruct‟ two universal and uncontested effects:
69
The technological progress refers to (a) technologies of surveillance and (b) technologies of simulation 70
Of interest to the author here is the heavily funded research in nanotechnology and ubiquitous computing.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
51
a. the determination of new needs and ends (in the short or the long run)
b. accidents, unintended and unanticipated consequences
It is worth highlighting that the availability of information and technologies produces a seductive effect
to institutions that want to make sense of their information (with the role of consultancy organisations being
critical in the diffusion of new technologies as seen in chapter 4). It is not always an explicit rationality of these
institutions to control but rather, control is an unintentional „systemic effect‟71
incorporated into the logic of
networks, systemic integration and information processing. Regarding the second point, i.e. accidents, it is
worth following the line of P.Virilio in saying that every technology „incorporates‟ the accident (the train was
created to be derailed, etc.); only with information and communication technologies, where security for
example is a major problem area for system designers, the effects of accidents are magnified and surpass the
locality of the social impact of the derailment of the train. The centralization of information into one single
database (as in the UK Id Cards Bill) „proposes‟ this type of accidents whose effects will have global reach and
far greater economic and social consequences than any institution (or even the state) can plan mitigation
against.
Our era is one where images are not just masking and perverting a basic reality (second order
simulacra) but of a third order where images mask the absence of the reality. In the fourth and final order there
is no gap whatsoever between the reality and the image; they bare no relationship because reality itself its own
unsullied simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1994). Strategies of preemption and deterrence support this fantasy where
the individual and the dividual, truth and fiction, the production of goods and the production of signs are
indistinguishable from the perspective of the institution and the subject. Because fourth order simulacra pose
questions about sociality itself (interestingly it can be concluded that it never existed) has throughout this paper
reasoned on the basis of third order simulacra. The hyperrealisation of social relations (Bogard, 1996) cannot
be solely understood by conventional theories of the decontextualisation since they are always contextualised
into a „vacuum‟ or the conceptual network, always under scrutiny and examination in overt and covert (through
the code) passage points. The context of life itself is now shared between the real and the virtual or hyperreal,
but the powers of the real are in decline, whereas the hyperreal progresses to an ecstasy of rationalisation of
processes, control and government. Existing surveillant and simulation apparatuses already denote this trend;
they become more silent, can see through surfaces (the body is a surface as well), cover a wider range of
instances of social life, are performed on a time far away, construct and deconstruct new flows of information.
This study concentrated on more that the micro-politics of technology; it elevated the level of analysis
to the stratum of imaginaries, to the impossible real or fantasies involved in technologies of domination. The
frames of interpretation used throughout this report are supported by (a) the principles of neo-Weberian and
neo-Marxist theories and, as argued, (b) studies of the risk society. These studies go no further than
mentioning simulation (especially referencing the work of Bogard). This paper has hopefully made evident the
centrality of simulation in understanding the modern era. The author therefore believes that future studies
(empirical and theoretical) of modern technologies of government and control should acknowledge and
71
It is argued that in some cases the „system of control‟ is created through an accumulation of mundane decisions of the institution in its effort to understand its activities through available information – on the offset looking „innocent‟ but contributing to the creation of this system of control.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
52
incorporate the work of Baudrillard and Bogard on simulation as much as (if not more than) surveillance.
Especially in studies that favour an interpretation of society based on risk rationalities, simulation opens up
new windows for the analysis and problematisations of modern practices. The anticipation of the real is best
understood through the underlying ecstasy of power that includes the minimisation (elimination) of any forms of
deviant behaviour by defining calculating, projecting them into the future, and therefore finding the necessary
space of reasoning. Through this process the social environment in which the deviance manifests is shaped
before it does manifest so that it is always inside the boundaries of the system, always in hypereality before
reality always made non deviant by definition, depriving it by any meaning, making it its own simulacrum. Risk
rationalities aim at minimising the gap between the real and the simulation, and make the simulation (i.e. the
model, the code, the program) test reality at the point of information collection. This should be the theoretical
beginning of trying to understand the risk knowledge dialectic and practices of the anticipation / prevention of
the real.
Simulation and Surveillance: The logic of Prediction and the Transformation of Government and Control in Late Modernity
53
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i Data Mining - There has been an explosive increase in the use of data mining from organisations to improve
their marketing strategies and customer service. Governmental institutions mostly for the latter reason can adopt data mining operations; the benefit is the better understanding of their processes, improved decision making throughout the institution, the enhancement of governmental service delivery, better citizen satisfaction and increased efficiency of the organisation. Interest in data mining from government agencies increases as database projects proliferate in the agenda of these agencies; especially the availability of personal data in the NIR and their integration with data available in local databases, as well as an „information sharing‟ logic opens up new dimensions in government citizen interactions. The continuously improving data mining operations can be categorised into the following.
Table: Data Mining Operations (adapted from: A.M.Hormozi and S.Giles, 2004)
Clustering/Segmentation is a method of grouping data into clusters that bare some similarity. The difference to classification is that these clusters are determined from the data set rather than relying on predefined classes.
Visualisation is the graphical representation of data that enables a greater understanding of the data set to help detect hidden patterns in data
Predictive Modelling is the most common data mining operation. The aim is to predict a specific attribute based on the examination of other attributes in the data. Prediction is used in many ways such as for credit approval, customer retention management or target marketing.
Link Analysis is used to identifying links between different records in a database. The most common use is in market basket analysis used by retail stores, however it can also be used to understand long-term transaction habits of individuals by identifying associations over time.
Deviance Detection leads to „true‟ discovery, by identifying data subjects that express deviation from an expectation. It supports fraud detection in the use of credit cards, insurance claims, quality control and defects tracing.
Dependency Modelling involves the identification and representation of dependencies among variables, in a structural (the structural dependencies of variables) and qualitative (the strength of their dependency) way. Models of causality can be either probabilistic or deterministic.
Data Summarisation provides summaries of a data subsets. The goal is to find relations betweens fields of data by applying association rules on the data subsets.