Draft working paper of an on-going project. Cite with permission only, please. Criticism and comments appreciated.
Marlin-Bennett Page
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3/13/2006
Leaving on a Jet Plane?
A Political Economy Analysis of Surveillance
and the Security of Global Civil Aviation
Renée Marlin-Bennett
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American University
## email not listed ##
Prepared for Presentation to the International Studies Association Meeting
in San Diego, California, March, 2006
As threats to security seem to multiply and as technological abilities advance,
surveillance is increasingly ubiquitous (Castells 2004; Lyon 1994; Lyon 2002; Norris and
Armstrong 1999; Salter 2004; Willims 2003). Yet despite the perceived need for surveillance,
surveillance is not a simple, neutral tool in the global political economy. To watch is --
ideally – to prevent harm, and if not to prevent harm, then to mitigate it; but surveillance
itself is not without costs and risks. The wrong surveillance, the right surveillance done
poorly, too much surveillance, and not enough all pose problems for the public good
(Willims 2003). This paper is an initial sally toward a general theoretical approach to
understanding surveillance. I take an admittedly circuitous route to that end. The first part
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I would like to thank Charles Lor and Andriy Shevtsov for their research assistance. This
paper represents a working paper of a project that is still in process.
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