The excerpts from Lyon and Monohan and Wood highlighted domains of law enforcement, governance, advertising, managerial-worker relations, military development, and carceral institutions as contributors to surveillance studies and surveillance as a contemporary practice. Both emphasized that while these domains each bear idiosyncrasy and notability in their implementation of surveillance, the practice itself is in many ways ubiquitous in modern and post-modern life, as well as integral to the functioning of both totalitarian and liberal democratic societies. I felt that my perspective on surveillance was particularly expanded by the more minute examples brought to fore, like the self-surveilling function of diet and weight trackers (Lyon 55).
A domain that I felt was touched on but perhaps overlooked is surveillance within the domestic sphere. A child’s safety, for instance, may benefit greatly from technological instruments such as baby monitors that watch for injury-inducing movement when the parent cannot be in the room, or tracking applications that can monitor location in the extraordinary event of an abduction or similarly nefarious crisis. Yet, as the child comes of age, these technologies can quickly overstep boundaries and contribute to an authoritarian parenting paradigm. I am also curious as to the ethical implications of placing cameras within a child-residing home for the purpose of intervening physical or sexual abuse from adults that enter the home – whether that be hired care or friends and family members – that nonetheless arguably violates privacy entitlements. In addition, care regimens for cognitively impaired adults who have been determined to pose a danger to themselves when left unattended often consist of various surveilling apparati, including cameras both in and around the home as well as tracking bracelets that can be linked to local police. While, in my own experiences around dementia care-taking, such devices have been essential, the breadth and scope of their abilities pose unease. In particular, I think there is great concern to be found in the power and control offered by surveilling technologies to abusers in domestic partnerships. As tracking applications have become so normalized, the gradual expansion of such interpersonal surveillance often does not indicate toxicity until learned helplessness – with perhaps a panoptic component – has developed within the abused person.