Private Intelligence

Undercover Research: Corporate and police spying on activists. An introduction to activist intelligence as a new field of surveillance.

“…At the same time, spying on behalf of corporations continues 'to be as hugely under-researched as it is legally and ethically problematic' (Spalek and O'Rawe 2014). The proposed field of study will seek to enhance the literature with context-specific, qualitative case studies of police, corporate intelligence and private security agents who are increasingly involved in spying on activists (Blancke 2011;Earl 2004;Toffler 1990;Cronin and Crawford 1999). Building on Walby and Monaghan (2012), Boykoff's 'mechanisms of suppression' model could be of use to analyse the case studies, aiming to supplement existing typologies of repression of social movements by the state (Boykoff 2007) to include corporate influences on the policing of protest.…”