Introduction

Reflecting on surveillance capitalism made me think about states’ video-surveillance of public spaces, and its potential benefits to increase safety and respect for common rules. However, the authoritarian spectrum of Orwell's 1984 appears whenever we evoke generalized state video-surveillance ambitions. But one could argue that a democratic state, concerned with ensuring citizens’ rights and freedoms, and dictated by the desire to build a better society, could legitimately promote absolute transparency of the public space in order to achieve, thanks to the deterrent effect of video-surveillance technologies, greater safety and respect for common rules. In other words, that a thoughtful surveillance conducted by a thoughtful state is legitimate. The objective of this essay is to understand why surveillance cannot be an option for democracies.

The rationale for transparency of the public space

The assumption that greater surveillance of the public space, through greater use of video-surveillance technologies, could discourage wrongdoings, seems at first convincing: the awareness of being observed increases the fear of being caught and might dissuade the act. In this quest for greater transparency, video-surveillance technologies could be useful in two ways: detecting and attributing wrongdoings through real-time surveillance; identifying suspects and collecting evidences in a posteriori analysis.

Nevertheless, studies on the effectiveness of video-surveillance technologies are contradictory, some demonstrating their usefulness; some demonstrating their irrelevance, errors and biases. But does it matter? Not really. The question of efficiency is much less relevant than that of the desirability of a perfectly video-surveilled society, that could be achieved by high-performance technologies that might be available one day, and a sufficiently accurate database to correctly identify wrongdoers that might be elaborated over time.

Should we hope for a society in which no one steals, no one throw garbage in the street, no one endanger others by driving too fast? Maybe. But the question that must be asked is: what becomes of a society subject to constant observation of the public space? It ceases to be democratic and shifts towards totalitarianism.

What becomes of a democratic society subject to constant observation of the public space?

The essence of democratic public space is the exercise of rights and freedoms. Any democracy wishing to achieve absolute transparency of the public space, for whatever legitimate end sought (e.g., safety and respect for common rules), annihilates the raison d’être of polis, shifting from a space of freedom, encouraging the exercise of rights and citizens’ participation in political life, to a space of control, leading to their inevitable restraint. Democracy dies when the essence of public space shifts from liberty to control.

Democracy then shifts to autocracy when citizens’ free will and autonomy are undermined. And yet, by seeking to deter deviant behaviors through video-surveillance, the transparency endeavor transforms the public space in a behavioral checkpoint aimed at successfully influencing behaviors. Therefore, transparency shapes the society into a body of disciplined New Men, in a space in which living takes on another meaning.

Living takes on another meaning, and individuals are no more regarded as free autonomous subjects, entitled to rights whose existence cannot be weighed against the need for more security and discipline, but objects to deter and direct in order to achieve a specific goal. All the more so since, through the eye of technology, public space becomes by definition a space for analyzing suspicious moving objects.

Why can’t a better society be achieved through surveillance?

First of all, a surveillance society is a society of pessimism and defeat in the ability of human beings to behave according to the common good and to assimilated moral standards. A surveillance society is a society that loses faith in human nature. Moreover, surveillance will never make a society better in itself, and will never make better men. Reason and education are the only practicable instruments towards building a better society.

In addition, any generalized video-surveillance design would be costly and time-consuming for a state and might be conducted at the detriment of other public policies. But the quest for greater safety and discipline cannot be democracies' main concern. Rather than spending time and money setting up and managing video-surveillance systems, states should focus on individual’s fulfilment, civic dynamism and emulation, the pursuit of social welfare and scientific progress, which are far greater goals for forward-looking societies.

Furthermore, generalized surveillance to ensure compliance with certain rules at a given period freezes society in an implacable framework, and conflicts with the possibility of society to evolve towards greater futures. What would today's world be like if perfect surveillance of public space had been available 100 years ago? Thoughtful societies must leave room for deviations because we can’t be sure that today’s standards will endure.

Lastly, I couldn’t remove from my thoughts while writing this essay the fear of terrorism, and the weight of fear in the desire for more surveillance. Especially in light of the new attacks in France. I don't know to what extent an attack can be thwarted by total surveillance of the public space. But what I am sure of is that terrorists will have won when they have succeeded in reshaping our freedom-oriented democratic societies.

Conclusion

The use of greater video-surveillance to achieve greater safety and respect for rules would not only annihilate individuals’ autonomy, rights and freedom, but would also destroy the balance, prosperity, and meaning of democratic societies. For these reasons, a thoughtful surveillance society is not conceivable.

Blinded by a desire for more security and discipline that led me to relativize rights and freedoms, I may have thought otherwise, and considered that an enlightened state could pursue an enlightened and thus positive surveillance, but without realizing the implications that such a design would have on what a society is, and what it means to live.

Yet the path towards more video-surveillance is seducing an increasing number of Western democracies, rights and freedoms as well as democratic values being easily relativized when facing security issues and fears.

FIRST DRAFT

State video-surveillance of public spaces