ABSTRACT
Describing the social and economic costs of surveillance is entering a largely unknown territory with soft ground and quickly changing landscape. First, surveillance itself is changing, and sometimes hides its face. Technical progress in information technologies in general is not only increasing the capabilities of surveillance technologies, but is also transforming practically all kinds of information technologies and services into devices and applications which, as a byproduct, can be used to extend surveillance to spheres that were completely private a few decades ago. The different forms of surveillance, the intensity and intrusiveness, the outreach and the range, the duration and permanence, the context in which surveillance is applied, are but a few of the many factors influencing the costs of surveillance. Second, social costs and, in many aspects, even economic costs are far away from being well-
defined, broadly understood and easily applied concepts, and this vagueness holds even more if these concepts are to be applied to quickly evolving and multifaceted societal phenomena such as surveillance. The manifold difficulties involved in identifying and determining the social and economic costs of surveillance – let alone quantifying these costs – should not, however, serve as an excuse for not dealing with these costs when debating and deciding on the development and implementation of surveillance technologies and measures. On the contrary, neglecting the social impacts and related costs does not imply that they do not exist and that our society does not have to carry them, but that we risk creating large and potentially irreversible damage to the economy and society. However, we need to be aware that considering social and economic costs does not auto-
matically guarantee bringing about the best solutions. There are several reasons why such a promise would be misleading: social and economic costs include categories that exclude monetary quantification. The identification and determination of social costs depends on the evaluation of social values, implying that personal subjective judgements influence the evaluation schemes and their outcomes. It is therefore likely that not only are the importance and magnitude of the specific social impacts resulting from surveillance evaluated differently by different people but also the algebraic sign might reverse – i.e. what is regarded as a cost by one person might be regarded as a benefit by another.
