Wikisurveillance: A Genealogy of Cooperative Watching in the West

Abstract

This article interrogates the relationship between technology and law enforcement and how changing police surveillance techniques have influenced Western expectations of privacy from the mid-19th century to the present. By examining the evolution of telecommunications devices in particular, the author identifies a diffuse and publicly inclusive system of collaborative data mining maintained by private citizens—a culture of wikisurveillance—as being a technologically determined consequence of police reforms made in 1829 Britain. From the now extinct police signal box to modern AMBER alerts, technology allows the police to be divested of their public presence as mechanical surveillance responsibilities are willingly usurped by private enterprise and largely unaccountable civilians who collectively coauthor and codify the occidental discourse on privacy. As public and private spaces alike become increasingly subject to internal, unregulated monitoring that mimics the police methodology, this article explores the origins of our present zeitgeist of mediated voyeurism.