ABSTRACT
Surveillance – the word comes pre-loaded with imagery and emotions. George Orwell and Big Brother, the FBI and the KGB, private detectives and James Bond devices, real-life television and grainy images of criminals, a lone vulnerable human targeted by the resources of the state, a space-age future in which implanted chips monitor our thoughts – few of the connotations of surveillance are positive. And yet, in contemporary Western society we have largely embraced surveillance; while we worry about the limits of privacy and about things getting into ‘the wrong hands’ , in general a burgeoning of electronic surveillance is accepted as a means of making our world safer.
