Most eyes will be on the athletes at next year's London Olympics but one academic will be more interested in what's happening in the skies above.
For the past eight years, Professor Steve Graham, of Newcastle University, has been studying how the line between military and civilian technologies has become increasingly blurred.
It might sound like science fiction to some, but his research shows that military-style surveillance is already commonplace in our cities – and we're in danger of accepting it without question.
At next year's Olympics, for example, military-style drones, already trialled in Merseyside to monitor football match crowds from the air, will be deployed throughout the event. Major European research efforts, meanwhile, are pushing for drones to be used for all aspects of everyday policing.
In his book Cities Under Siege, which is published on 17 November 2011, Professor Graham offers increasing evidence of a crossover between surveillance and control of everyday life in Western cities and technology used in war zones.
"Our cities are being militarized by stealth, under the banner of improving public security against vaguely defined people and threats," he said. "Everyday sites and events like political summits or the London Olympics are becoming shop windows for the latest security kit. In a world of massive economic chaos, the security industry is booming like never before.
"When the outlandish becomes an every day occurrence – using 'nonlethal' military technology of high frequency noise to disperse teenagers outside supermarkets, for example - there's a shift in what we perceive as 'normal' and that's extremely troubling.
"Already, people controlling drones to kill alleged insurgents in Afghanistan or Iraq from bases on the edge of Las Vegas are using controls modelled on video games. Popular militarised entertainment and weapons of war are now blurred together."
Instead of legal or human rights based on universal citizenship, the emerging security politics of cities are founded on the privatisation of public spaces, combined with the profiling of individuals, places, behaviours, associations and groups in advance of any alleged misdemeanor or crime. "Those deemed not to conform with increasingly gentrified city centres have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned, controlled and excluded," said Professor Graham.
This in turn is creating the biggest shift in our ideas of citizenship and national boundaries since the mid-17th century. Increasingly, national borders are moving from the edge of nations right into the hearts of cities in places like London's St. Pancras rail station.
Such shifts also expose how vulnerable contemporary cities are to attack. "The very nature of the modern city, with its reliance on intricate webs of infrastructure, its density and anonymity and dependence on imported water, food and energy creates the possibility of violence against it and within it," said Professor Graham.
"Recent terrorist attacks have shown us that more and more contemporary warfare takes place in tower blocks and subway tunnels than jungles or deserts.
"However, the effects of terrorism, whilst very real, pales against the much less visible efforts of state militaries to target essential city infrastructures. The US and Israeli forces, for example, have worked systematically to 'demodernize' entire societies in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iraq since 1991 – particularly targeting water and electricity supplies.
"Although sold as bringing inexorable political pressure on adversary regimes, this ends up killing the most vulnerable members of society – the weak, the young, the old, the ill - as effectively as carpet bombing, but beyond the capricious gaze of the cameras."
Through his book he hopes to raise awareness of the influence that ordinary people can have on the situation, such as the global wave of urban occupations protesting against extreme austerity measures implemented since the financial crisis.
"It was a geographer, Trevor Paglen, working with plane spotters, who exposed the CIA's programme of extraordinary rendition flights, after all," said Professor Graham. "Ordinary people are beginning to make a stand against this stealth approach.
"Cities need to be places for people rather than just the profit of corporations. There are increasingly more completely privatised spaces where the public are not allowed to enter, such as the London Docklands, without being subjected to a check-point and questions about how 'legitimate' you are. In such places, and in new completely private shopping areas like Liverpool 1, all protests and political mobilisations are illegal. This is extremely problematic in a democratic society.
"It's taking away our freedom to move around the city and behave politically, turning them into a private space for companies to do as they want, which turns thousands of years of urban history on its head."
By 
No comments:
Post a Comment