Acciones variables

The development of new technologies have altered everyday life in the urban environment. Governments, businesses and individuals are able to gather ever greater amounts of data on the minutiae of the everyday. Cameras are installed to gather the visual components of the daily life and other devices such as GPS and RFID become components of elaborate computerised systems to follow the flows and patterns of movement throughout urban spaces. Crucial to

understanding the power relations embedded within these systems and to formulating a conception of resistance to these pervasive surveillance systems is to consider the relationship between these domestic/civil practices of

surveillance (regardless of function, ie: policing, marketing, convenience, etc.) and military practices. This is to consider what is described here as ‘the

militarisation of everyday life’ in which military technologies are imported in

the domestic urban environment and practices such as ‘tracking’ become embedded methods for observing, controlling and predicting the rhythms of everyday life. If the development of new technologies have led to ‘new forms of spatiality’ (Thrift and French, 2002), then in what respect this is built upon military innovations and, more importantly, ideologies is crucial for

understanding how this influences conceptions of a well functioning urban environment and population. And while we may talk of the ‘technological

unconscious’ (Clough in Thrift and French, 2002: 312) and afford these systems a level of agency it would be naïve to ignore the ideological motivations

embedded in the design of these technologies and the goals and justifications for developing these systems even if they do not necessarily function as they were originally designed and/or for how they were expected to perform. It is partially through understanding the ideologies and original intent behind these systems that one can develop practices for exposing their use and their

limitations.

Louise Amoore describes the “emerging geography of securitization of everyday life” (2009: 50) with the development of ‘algorithmic security’ which is ‘war-like’ not just because of the visible use of military practices such as airport security checks but more so because it ‘functions through a war-like

architecture’ (2009:51) where individuals are placed into binary groups based on notions of “us/them; safe/risky; inside/outside” (Shapiro in Amoore, 2009:

51). While critics of surveillance often point out that it exacerbates and

reinforces social divisions (Lyon, 1994) we see that by aligning with a military discourse this aspect becomes even more explicit as individuals are reduced to the military nomenclature of ‘targets’ with behaviour tagged with the binary

distinction of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. Surveillance is carried out on an

environment where the actors within are reduced to ‘us’/‘them’. However, which camp an individual belongs to is generally not immediately obvious so,

therefore, there is a justification for ubiquitous surveillance. For this,

surveillance emerges as an “apparatus of protection and violation” (Crandall, 1999). Ubiquitous surveillance is demanded when the populations consists of those who need protection and those who we need protection from. There is then a voracious need for data on everyone consisting of all the detritus of everyday life in order to establish “the statistical patterns of a general, urban background of ‘normality’” (Graham, 2010a: 201) used to extricate patterns which can then be classified as ‘abnormal’. Data from the rhythms of everyday interactions becomes the basis for “probabilistic knowledge” which becomes “a means of securitization” (Amoore, 2009: 52). In a civil environment,

particularly amongst the often technophiliac government and police, a military discourse accompanies the technology where discussions are around

‘positioning’, ‘tracking’, ‘identifying’, ‘predicting’, ‘targeting’ and ‘intercepting/

containing’ (Crandall, 1999). While adopting the militaristic discourse, the definition of ‘target’ may remain rather vague, broadly referring to anyone (and/

or everyone) who will come under the ‘gaze’ which will not necessarily be for any combative purposes but, rather, “a battle of another sort” such as “proactive policing, spotlighting or dividing targeted regions and social groups in the name of prevention or safety” (Crandall, 1999). So, within this discourse emerges a justification for expansive surveillance measures in which, in a sense, there is no discrimination as everyone comes under the tag of warranting the gaze for some purpose. However, at the same time, the end goal of this surveillance is to finely classify individuals into binary categories of ‘enemy’ and ‘friend’ (or, perhaps,

more appropriately, ‘subject’) which further isolates individuals and/or groups and exacerbates social divisions. The adoption of this discourse amongst the wider public is promoted by governments and police (and corporations) as a means for mobilising the ‘vigilance of a fearful public’ (Amoore, 2009: 50) where suspicion is encouraged and classification systems of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’

are adopted widely throughout society (for example, with immigration debates, as discussed in Dorling, 2011).

These surveillance, tracking and classification systems are reliant upon the development of algorithmic techniques which often (but not always) emerge from the military. However, Amoore points out that it should not necessarily be concluded that “society is strictly undergoing renewed militarization” but that, instead, “security practices oscillate back and forth across the different

domains” (Amoore, 2009: 50). What is most important about this point, as Amoore continues, is that as these techniques traverse “the spheres of commerce and consumption, transportation, military strategy and state

surveillance, the algorithm simultaneously conceals the architecture of enmity through which it functions” (2009: 57). And this is the crucial concern regarding this ‘militarisation’ and how it impacts upon everyday surveillance practices and permeates into the common ideology. As military ideologies ‘invade’ into

common discourse particularly in regards to policing and managing urban environments a disconnect arises between the problem and the understood solution in the sense that we see, for example, inappropriate measures taken to address rather mundane problems (such as using unmanned drones to catch fly-tipping (Daily Mail Reporter, 2010b)). While unacceptable, there is, at least, an understood link between the military and policing even if the link is often

exaggerated. However, what is more perverse is the adoption of this rhetoric in the business domain where potential consumers become targets, behaviour needs to be ‘tracked’ and data needs to be gathered and numbers crunched for predicting behaviours adapting a military architecture for marketing purposes.

There is a troubling connection between military surveillance in an urban environment which utilises sophisticated algorithms to measure ‘normal’

behaviour to anticipate ‘abnormal’ behaviour in an attempt to catch potential enemy combatants or bombers, police surveillance which uses similar

algorithms to catch potential anti-social behaviour and businesses which, again, use similar techniques to target potential consumers out of a crowd based upon observing ‘dwell-time’ (Cronin, 2006) - how long individuals look at a particular advertisement or shop window (or website). It signals the use of this ‘military architecture’ into everyday life and, more importantly, the obfuscation of this architecture and the implementation of inappropriate measures to monitor, predict and direct individual and group behaviours in everyday life. While these techniques demand ever more information on individuals and a relinquishing of privacy their processes are ever more shrouded in the name of security and/or privacy. Mark Andrejevic describes this an “asymmetrical loss of privacy” where

“individuals are becoming increasingly transparent to both public and private monitoring agencies, even as the actions of these agencies remain stubbornly opaque” (2007: 7). Jordan Crandall refers to this ‘opaque-ness’ as ‘improved seeing’ (Crandall, 1999). In this sense the goal is to ‘see’ more (‘seeing’

understood broadly including gathering more data) but for this process to be hidden and for access to be limited. The consequence is these practices go

‘under the radar’ or, from Thrift and French (2002), “below the level of explicit discourse” (2002: 325). Before even attempting to develop a resistance to this

pattern of military ideologies ‘infiltrating’ domestic surveillance practices, the first hurdle is to make visible and to bring into the popular discourse this architecture which, though ubiquitous, remains largely unnoticeable with severely restricted access.

Surveillance is ubiquitous in that it has permeated into all sectors of everyday life. It is also non-discriminate in that all aspects of daily life and all the various fragments of movements and interactions are of interest even if it is for the purposes of targeting particular individuals. It is methodologically

indiscriminate in its quest to discriminate. Surveillance practices can afford to expand the scale of data gathered because of the technological developments borrowed from the military sector. What follows, according to Jordan Crandall, is that “we are increasingly subjected to a form of being seen that knows us first and faster” (Crandall and Armitage, 2005: 20) which he relates to the military practice of ‘tracking’. In much of Crandall’s work he seeks to explore the distinction between ‘tracking’ and ‘seeing’ (for example: Crandall, 1999;

Crandall and Armitage, 2005; and Crandall, 2010). Tracking, according to Crandall, is an “anticipatory form of seeing” which is “always ahead of itself” (Crandall and Armitage, 2005: 20). It is a move away from a focus on

“perspective and position” and, instead, focuses on “movement-flow” and

“involves questions of human-machine relations” (2005: 21). There is a parallel here between Crandall’s discussions around the use of military strategies such as tracking and the use of algorithms within surveillance practices and Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis. While writing at different times and with different perspectives there is a resonance between the work from both writers. Crandall elucidates the relationship between military ideologies and technologies, and

how they become integrated into domestic and commercial surveillance. In particular, he highlights the role of algorithms to harness and direct movement (‘tracking’) which goes beyond past fixations on static images (‘seeing’). This focus on tracking is reminiscent of Lefebvre’s enjoinder to examine the time-space-movement of an environment (2004). Algorithms for surveillance, if put into this perspective, are a form of linear rhythm. They seek to influence the behaviour of individuals into predictable patterns and are the rhythms which seek to normalise behaviour and function as an external and restricting

influence upon the individual (or group). This can be juxtaposed against cyclical rhythms. “The cyclical is social organisation manifesting itself. The linear is the daily grind, the routine” (Lefebvre, 2004: 30). Relating Lefebvre’s distinction between the two forms of rhythms to surveillance, cyclical rhythms are those that exist outside of the tracking processes that exist in the spaces of what can be observed, predicted and directed. Everyday life consists of a myriad of rhythms (Lefebvre) or “movement and flow” (Crandall) and there are many layers and functions of these rhythms (or flows). Surveillance, through the use of algorithmic techniques and military practices) attempts to grasp all of them and create an orderly and predictable environment where abnormalities can easily picked out or targeted. However, this is never a totalising process and there are rhythms which exist outside of these practices.

The use of algorithmic techniques for surveillance purposes, in this sense, functions as a misused rhythmanalysis. There is a similar problem but with opposing goals. While Lefebvre seeks to employ rhythmanalysis in order to liberate everyday life, algorithmic techniques seek to constrain everyday life into a predictable and manageable package. Stephen Graham, writing on the

‘algorithmic gaze’ highlights the level of detail in simulated urban war games with a look at a representation of Jakarta where the city was “carefully digitised and ‘geo-specifically’ simulated in three dimensions” (2010: 209). The level of detail is so precise that it includes, down to the interior, buildings and moving vehicles and ‘civilians’. Individuals have been reduced to “dumb software avatars within a landscape of targets” and the “time-space rhythms” of the virtual Jakarta have been simulated to “add realism to the urban

battlespace” (Graham, 2010a: 210). “Noise, chaotic, has no rhythm” states Lefebvre (2004: 27). Rhythmanalysis seeks to uncover the conflict between linear and cyclical rhythms through a methodology which attempts to pull apart the distinct rhythms co-existing within a chaotic noisy urban environment. The aim is to raise awareness of the conflict and dominance of linear rhythms and the processes which seek to obfuscate this lack of equilibrium and, in doing so, arm the individual and/or rhythmanalyst with the tactics with which to

challenge this reality in order to, instead, embrace fulfilling and authentic extra-ordinary events. The inverse is the case with algorithmic techniques and

representations of urban environments such as the urban war game of Jakarta mentioned by Graham. Graham describes the goal of these types of systems which is to:

“...build up full representative data profiles on the ‘normal’ time-space movement patterns of entire subject cities so that algorithms could then use statistical modelling, and comprehensive ‘target’

databases...” (Graham, 2010a: 211)

This highlights the distinction between rhythmanalysis and the use of

algorithms for surveillance. Henri Lefebvre wanted to grasp and understand the

chaotic rhythms of everyday life in order to explore how to escape from the conforming pressures of linear rhythms. Surveillance seeks to analyse patterns in order to develop target databases. It is to reduce everyday life to statistics and models which is the opposite of rhythmanalysis. Henri Lefebvre aligned the rhythmanalyst with the poet and not the statistician who, he pointed out, merely counts things in an attempt to describe things in their immobility (2004).

Algorithmic techniques seek to bring movement back into a more static form in order to be more effectively monitored and controlled.

Conceptualising Crandall, Graham and Amoore’s discussion around the militarisation of everyday life and the use of military technologies and

ideologies within surveillance along with Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis is helpful because Lefebvre’s work (along with similar ideas from Guy Debord and the Situationists) allows the development of a notion of resistance to this problem.

A notion of resistance exists within the work of these authors even if not specifically articulated. Graham highlights the limitations of simulations of cities such as described with Jakarta. Despite the “intensifying power of tracking technologies” areas will persist to remain unknown (Graham, 2010a: 219).

These simulations are representations and, as such, will persist to have a limitation in use as a predictive tool. Graham points out that these systems often “simply malfunction or fail” (2010: 219). There may be serious negative consequences (Graham highlights the death of civilians) when they do not work as well as intended and this could drive resentment amongst the civilian

population.

So, to examine this from the perspective of considering how to resist this

militarisation of everyday life a number of tactics can be put together. There is a need to highlight the limitations of these systems whether through a form of rhythmanalysis or dérive which draws attention first to these systems which seek to be a form of “improved seeing” (Crandall, 1999) hidden from the population, then, second, to the spaces which escape the gaze and suggest possibilities for evasion and third, to highlight the flaws and malfunctions of these systems in order to stimulate a critique over the viability. Crandall, similarly acknowledges the flaws of these systems in his discussion of time and space distances where, like with rhythmanalysis, he observes a “stacking or layering along another axis” where realities must be juggled through “layering, interfacing, and collapsing of situations and formations according to various rhythms or beats, and under various constraints of productivity whether in the workplace or on the battlefield” (Crandall, 1999). To manage these complex layers requires precise coordination as, contrary to the anticipation created from the statistical models, they do not function in a necessarily orderly fashion but, again echoing Lefebvre, Crandall suggests that instead they function as

“tensional pulses, coordinating and diverging, of an operative rhythmics, and within such an arena, a problematics of synchronization” (1999, bold in original). As Crandall states, “It is not so easy to align the moving elements in the viewfinder”. It is here where the possibilities for evasion lie. Despite best efforts, everyday life can not be wholly anticipated. While much of everyday life may fit and fulfil these models there will remain aspects which are outside of the everyday, the ‘exceptional’ rhythms as Lefebvre described versus the ‘banal’. A sense of resistance appears when individuals understand how the processes of tracking work to restrict everyday life and then seek to find spaces outside of

these processes which are dependent on algorithms for tracking. The complexity of everyday life is difficult to harness and control particularly if, as Crandall states, “we will no longer sit still” (1999).