Banal surveillance? Variations on the theme of the “banalisation of surveillance”

Bellanova, Rocco [FUSL] De Hert, Paul [Vrije Universiteit Brussel]

Ex. 1: A UK enterprise offers the possibility to “stream” on-line the images randomly captured by CCTV in shops. Occasional users can connect to the website, register, watch the streaming and spot eventual “criminal” behavior. Each reported alert is rated, and the “user of the month”, i.e. the most successful amateur online detective, wins money. Ex. 2: A growing number of gymnasiums provide their clients with an electronic key that, among others, registers their health data and their training program. While doing exercise, the key monitors the performance, warning for excessive physical stress, or blaming the user for not fulfilling the scheduled program. Several manufacturers sell similar devices that can also communicate the outcomes through Twitter. Ex. 3: According to a newspaper, more than the 15% of the Facebook workers have “police-like” functions: they check the “morality” of the photos posted, they ensure cooperation with law enforcement authorities and they control the “security” of the platform by simulating hackers’ attacks. Those few examples share several features of classical modern surveillance practices, but they also invite to question classic approaches. One could say that these, somehow atypical, practices re-shape the assemblages to a point in which surveillance becomes “banal”, commonplace, something society does not care about. Banalised forms of surveillance enter daily life without notice, and they become a common part of socio-political and economic relations. While already significant, this first common sense description of banal is not the only possible definition of the notion. The French word “banalisation” offers at least four other definitions: the process of becoming ordinary and entering social mores; the disguise of a police car; the shift of the legal status of goods, from a feudal to a communal one; and the modification of a train rail in order to allow its use in both directions. These different meanings of “banalisation” mirror several features and developments of surveillance practices and assemblages. Among them: the evolution of the relations between surveillant and surveilled, evolving beyond acceptance and collaboration; the emergence of new esthetics of surveillance, based on invisibility and “mimesis”; the dynamic nature of power relations as well as the pivotal and ubiquitous role played by technique, generally hidden by its folding. The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of “banalisation of surveillance” to sketch a possible analysis of what could be considered modern atypical surveillance practices. Playing with few examples and different variations of “banalisation”, the study identifies some of the current impasses of surveillance studies and highlights the need for a better understanding of the re-articulation of assemblages in different environments. In particular, it proposes to build on the insights of authors such as Der Derian, Marx, Foucault and Latour, to develop a framework of analysis able to take into account the effects of esthetics’ redefinition of surveillance and the participation of both human and non-human actors to surveillant assemblages.