5   Jean-François Lyotard and the Inhumanity of Internet Surveillance

David W. Hill

5.1. INTRODUCTION

As we have moved towards an information society so too has surveillance become increasingly informational in its object and operation. In our day-to-day exchanges we are uploading and sharing valuable quantities of information, making possible unprecedented levels of surveillance. David Lyon (1994) notes that surveillance in this context is about storing and processing personal information. This definition places a desirable emphasis on information storage, highlighting that surveillance is not just about how information is used but also the amassing of it in the first place. With this in mind, Gary T. Marx’s (2002) characterization of the “new ...

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