The Stuff of Surveillance: Varieties of Personal Information
The Stuff of Surveillance: Varieties of Personal Information
This chapter deals with types of surveillance data. Such data are honeycombed with attributes and tacit expectations that can be systematically compared. What are the major kinds of data that surveillance may gather? How do the characteristics of these data affect explanation, evaluation, manners, policy and law? When we speak of surveillance, just what is “it” that is surveilled? What cultural expectations and attitudes accompany different kinds of data? A central argument of the book is that understanding and evaluating surveillance require attention to the setting but the kind of data (visual, auditory, text etc.) may be independent of this. The chapter identifies four basic types by combining dimensions of personal-impersonal and private-public. It also identifies ten types of information that can be connected to the person (e.g., temporal, behavioral, beliefs) and a series of analytic attributes that may cut through these such as intimate, personal, sensitive and unique and or core identification.
Keywords: unique identification, core identification, intimate information, sensitive information, personal information, impersonal information, public information, private information
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
