Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

WATCHING OURSELVES

2006; Routledge; Volume: 20; Issue: 4-5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09502380600708770

1466-4348

Bilge Yeşil,

Policing Practices and Perceptions

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) was introduced by the Attorney General John Ashcroft immediately following the September 11 attacks and hastily passed through the Congress in October 2001. The act came under a firestorm of criticism from civil liberties advocates because of the litany of legislative changes it introduced that significantly increased the surveillance powers of law enforcement agencies without a sufficient system of checks and balances. 2. TIA was proposed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in December 2002 seeking to search for and capture terrorists by using data-mining and profiling technologies and by analyzing commercial transactions and private communications. Similar to the PATRIOT Act, TIA was also met with vehement opposition both from the legislators and the public because of its potential implications on civil liberties and its exaggerated promise of identifying terrorists. As a result, in February 2003, the Senate rejected to fund the program, and the Pentagon withdrew its plans to implement it. However, plans to fund and implement the program, which was repackaged by the Pentagon under the friendlier name of Terrorism Information Awareness, are underway. The program will be enforced once the Defense Department submits the Senate a detailed report on its goals, costs, and impacts. Other government and federal agency initiatives which seek to fight terrorism and by harnessing information and surveillance technologies include the following: The Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS) launched by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in December 2002 collects information about foreign students and scholars based on their local and international addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses as well as education and travel records. In 2003, the Transportation Security Administration announced plans to introduce an enhanced version of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS II) that will conduct background checks on all airline passengers by collecting their full name, date of birth, home address, and home telephone number as well as their financial and transactional data. Already the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program (US VISIT) launched by the Department of Homeland Security in January 2004 checks the identity of foreign visitors at 115 airports and 14 seaports based on their retinal and fingerprint scans. 3. Of course, urban design has always been influenced by the goal of crime reduction or of alleviation of the fear of crime. As Nan Ellin (1997 Ellin, N. 1997. "'Shelter from the storm or form follows fear and vice versa'". In Architecture of Fear, Edited by: Ellin, N. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. [Google Scholar]) shows, changes in urban planning in favor of safety and security can be traced back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. According to Ellin, transformations in city design stemming from fear of crime materialized with the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and as the accelerated changes brought about by modern industrialization began to incite insecurities among the bourgeoisie. The 'unreliable and often sub-standard working conditions of the new wage-earning class, the inherent antagonism between it and the small class of owners, [and] increased geographic mobility due to the unrelenting search by people for better wages and by workplaces for greater profits' created a 'new constellation of fear ... both within the factory and outside of it' (p. 20). To cope with such fears certain mechanisms were put into operation, exemplified by Taylor's scientific management inside the factory and the imposition of the grid for urban development outside it. The most famous example of such a transformation is the redesign of Paris between 1853 and 1872, overseen by Baron Hausmann and the Emperor Napoleon III. Hausmann sought to clear slums, which he regarded as 'unhealthy islands', and open up 'breathing spaces' in the city. Central to the redevelopment of Paris was standardization, thus giving the city a sense of order (p. 18). The underlying purpose of such city designs was to 'bring about social reform, especially by instilling morals and the work ethic' (p. 17). By suppressing the social and productive activities in favor of movement and consumption, the public space was rationalized and commodified (p. 20). Ellin argues that since the nineteenth century, the culture of fear has transformed public spaces into guarded and controlled places (although not always successfully); increased the visibility of the ruled but decreased the visibility of the rulers; and created disciplinary spaces (pp. 34-5). 4. It must also be noted that the role of video surveillance is still debatable even if crime rates are down. Criminologists argue that lower crime rates in a surveilled area cannot be attributed to cameras alone, since video surveillance is generally accompanied by other anti-crime techniques such as better lighting.