Abstract: Surveillance is tough work. Depending on the job, the U.S. Department of Labor tells us that working conditions can include any combination of the following: stress, considerable time spent on the feet, danger, confrontations with angry or upset individuals, risk, physical discomfort, lethal hazards, fi eldwork in high crime areas, monotony, constant alertness to threatening situations, irregular hours, and a heavy toll on private life.1 On top of the physical and psychological strain, a surveillance worker must also possess great self-discipline to control unproductive ethical impulses to look away, to perceive innocence instead of guilt, to see a friend not a foe, to accept the ineffable and resist the probable. Such care for the person being watched may not be so tempting as screwing around on the job, which for a surveillance worker could amount to the same thing as having an ethical moment. Whatever the case, the humanity of the surveillance worker has always been a weakness of surveillance systems, especially in the eyes of those overseeing the work.

Abstract: Historically, the forms of surveillance attending episodes of militarization, warring violence, and internal surveillance are part of a more general biopolitics. They are articulated with other political functions aimed at accepting, rejecting, or managing bodies. The concept of biopolitics, which is increasingly invoked in critical political analyses, originates with Michel Foucault's discussion of the "biopolitics of the population," an exercise of governance that "brought life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations" in the nineteenth century.1 Whereas previously states contained a "people" who were subject to the sovereign's prerogatives, by the mid-nineteenth century, governance involved more than merely extracting obedience from its subjects. It became involved in managing a "population," understood in terms of the energy and cooperation that could be expected from bodies that work, serve in the army, or, at a minimum, maintain the coherence and positive functioning of the family.

Abstract: The idea that computerized face recognition may have helped avert the al- Qaeda terrorist attacks was perhaps the most ambitious claim circulating about biometric identifi cation technologies in the aftermath of September 11. Along with the enormous fl ood of imagery of the day relayed in the news media were the out-of-focus surveillance-camera images of two of the alleged attackers. The recorded video image from the airport in Portland that appears to show Mohammad Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari passing through airport security is a familiar part of 9/11 iconography. It is virtually impossible to reference this image without also invoking the claim that facial recognition technology could have identifi ed the men in the image as wanted terrorist suspects. Already existing commercially available technology, according to this regretful yet strangely hopeful assertion, "could have instantly checked the image against photos of suspected terrorists." Technologies that use digital readings of the face to identify individuals could have saved the United States from the worst terrorist attack in its history.

Abstract: In depicting contemporary panopticism, Roy Boyne has identifi ed danger as the single most effective cause of surveillance, where "danger from our enemies, danger from those who might grow into our enemies, [and] danger from those who could not look after themselves" were different categories.1 The dangers posed by the vulnerable and the criminal are linked within the regime of surveillance that has been imposed on the sexually marginalized female prostitutes of Bengal, who are neither criminals nor victims and yet have been both criminalized and victimized by the medico-moral-legal code of surveillance that defi nes them. The prostitute as the site of work, sex, disease, power, desire, and pleasure has recently emerged from these contested constructions as a new political subject. The global epidemic of AIDS has forced a radical remapping of sexual boundaries, with prostitutes as the most likely group to contract and spread the disease. The concern for sexual health has given the prostitutes new visibility: from the familiar status of a marginal group of sexually aberrant women, they are now being considered a signifi cant target for public health policy. In the post-1990 phase of modernization, the Indian state has been keen to include them in the welfare agenda and regulate their behavior through surveillance that marks their bodies as domains of sexual health and social discipline.

Abstract: If you ever visit the remote hills and hollows that make up the far southeastern corner of Appalachian Ohio, you will fi nd the poorest counties in the state. There will be roads you can barely drive on, schools that are chronically underfunded, and legions of people who are unemployed or consigned to jobs that lack the income and benefi ts needed for a secure life. Because of the structural poverty of the region, many families receive help from the state's Department of Job and Family Services, formally called the Department of Human Services and known by everyone but the bureaucrats as "the welfare office."

Abstract: Turkey's Central Population Administrative System--Merkezi Nüfus Ídaresi Sistemi (MERNI˙S)--is at the center of the Turkish state's efforts to establish a database of information about its population. MERNI˙S increases the state's powers to (re)produce individuals for hegemonic purposes by adapting the state's administrative practices to the dynamics of contemporary processes of global production. By assigning individuals a unique number that identifi es them as citizens, MERNI˙S generates the necessary local conditions to align Turkey with the emerging global control society. MERNI˙S was designed to eliminate repetition and inconsistencies in the state's information systems and to consolidate various kinds of information on its citizens. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this one-numbered system supplies perfect, rapid, and reliable services, making life easy for citizens.1 One number also indicates the centralization of power and helps solidify Turkish state authority. This is centralization not only of power but also of identifi cation of the individual.

Abstract: Everywhere in our daily lives, we are identifi ed, tracked, profi led, and known. Infrastructures of surveillance--everyday, taken-for-granted, institutionalized, and technically mediated practices that identify individuals and observe and analyze their actions--permeate society. These infrastructures determine who is able to view whom, at what expense, and for what purpose. They mediate the production of social knowledge and social power. The popular press decries these developments for the loss of privacy they entail. Scholars warn that these surveillance practices group individuals into classes, then treat those classes in a discriminatory fashion. But visibility is not always detrimental to individuals or social groups. The construction of identity, the naming of a group, the claiming of membership in that group, the representation and dissemination of knowledge of the group, is a strategy of political power. The political (and epistemological) question is not whether individuals are known and typifi ed. We always are. Rather, it is a question of how individuals are known and typifi ed--by whom, to whom, as what, and toward what end we are made visible. This article moves the arguments over information environments away from issues of privacy, probing instead the ethical allocation of the resources of visibility and knowledge production.

Abstract: A sweeping movement toward acknowledging state crimes against citizens has been one of the most striking signs of recent political statesmanship and broad-based efforts for social justice after the innumerable civil devastations of the twentieth century. In Argentina, the unoffi cial story in all its harrowing detail became the offi cial story. Elsewhere, "following Australia's offi cial apology to Aborigines delivered by Paul Keating, Clinton made amends to Native Hawaiians, ex-PM Murayama apologized for Japanese war crimes, [and] Tony Blair expiated on behalf of the Irish potato famine."1 All these national stories have their own specifi city, but one element is common to all. In any process of national reconciliation, fi rst-person testimonies from the victims are crucial.

Abstract: Holding a pirated VCD copy of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2003) that he found on a Beijing street, U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans solemnly warned the Chinese government in his Beijing press conference: "We have been patient but our patience is wearing thin."1 Evans was on the mission to coerce the Chinese government to further open its markets for American products and services; this economic mission was a crucial item in George W. Bush's reelection campaign, and Evans chose to attract media's attention and solicit the American people's identifi cation by picking up on a pirated Hollywood fi lm as the ultimate symbol of China's disrespect of fair trade in general and the country's robbery of American wealth specifi cally. The VCD copy, according to Evans, was found all over Beijing, yet the fi lm had begun its fi rst run in movie theaters in the United States just two weeks before and was not available in U.S. stores in video or DVD format. Evans told members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing that "it didn't take long. In the last twenty-four hours, I was able to purchase a CD on the streets of Beijing."2 As Evans had arrived in Beijing only the afternoon before, his assertion simply implies that hitting the streets of the capital to locate a bootlegged version of a recent big-hit Hollywood fi lm was the fi rst, and probably the most important, task for this high-profi le China visit. With a pirated fi lm in hand, Evans could praise American creativity, criticize protectionism, defend globalization, celebrate market liberalization, and curse political authoritarianism all at the same time. The bootlegged Kill Bill VCD effectively condensed a basket of capitalist ideology into one sublime object.