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
of the paper introduces the concept of surveillance as a flow of information, the control of
which manifests power. From this abstract exercise, I turn to a concrete example: the
Universal Security Audit Programme (USAP), conducted under the auspices of the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). In doing so, I attempt to hang some
empirics on the bones of the definition, fleshing out the story so that its real-world
expression can be seen. The next step in the analysis is to turn back to the level of
abstraction and to demonstrate how the USAP case is an example of a larger category of
surveillance projects, a case that retains some unique features while following a generalized
structure. In the final section, I turn to the aspect of this exercise that is relevant to the topic
of the panel: Why do states subject themselves to USAP audits; in other words, why (in the
world!) do states comply?
A theoretical framework for surveillance and information flow
The Oxford English Dictionary dates the entry of the French word, “surveillance,”
into English in 1799, when it referred to the surveillance of people. The use of the term
surveillance to refer to observation of things – airplanes landing at an airport, for example –
seems to have begun in 1947 (Surveillance 2005). Now it is common to hear the use of the
“surveillance” to refer to a wide range of activities, including what Gary T. Marx refers to as
“traditional surveillance” (old fashioned spying, wiretaps, police surveillance, and the like)
and “new surveillance” (“scrutiny through the use of technical means to extract or create
personal or group data, whether from individuals or contexts”). His definition includes both
the gathering of the information and the analysis of it (Marx 2005).
I think it is useful, however, to leave the definition of surveillance, per se, as the
intentional collection of information. What I will call a “surveillance project,” encapsulates
the collection of information (surveillance), its analysis, and then the dissemination of the
Convention