Trust and Transparency in an Age of Surveillance

Abstract

Investigating the theoretical and empirical relationships between transparency and trust in the context of surveillance, this volume argues that neither transparency nor trust provides a simple and self-evident path for mitigating the negative political and social consequences of state surveillance practices.Dominant in both the scholarly literature and public debate is the conviction that transparency can promote better-informed decisions, provide greater oversight, and restore trust damaged by the secrecy of surveillance. The contributions to this volume challenge this conventional wisdom by considering how relations of trust and policies of transparency are modulated by underlying power asymmetries, sociohistorical legacies, economic structures, and institutional constraints. They study trust and transparency as embedded in specific sociopolitical contexts to show how, under certain conditions, transparency can become a tool of social control that erodes trust, while mistrust-rather than trust-can sometimes offer the most promising approach to safeguarding rights and freedom in an age of surveillance.The first book addressing the interrelationship of trust, transparency, and surveillance practices, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of surveillance studies as well as appeal to an interdisciplinary audience given the contributions from political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and civil society.

Qualitative Evidence on Chilling Effects—how Users’ Imaginaries of Dataveillance Lead to Inhibited Digital Behavior

“…While there is an established body of theoretical and empirical research on online privacy and how internet users aim at protecting it in light of surveillance discourses (see Viola & Laidler, 2022), research on dataveillance and, specifically, its effects has only recently emerged. Extant empirical research has confirmed that people are somewhat aware of dataveillance (e.g., Lupton, 2020) and that they limit their legitimate information and communication behavior in response to this perception (e.g., Marthews & Tucker, 2017;Penney, 2016;Stoycheff et al, 2019).…”

Transparent human – (non-) transparent technology? The Janus-faced call for transparency in AI-based health care technologies

“…It is rightly pointed out that the demand for transparency initially sounds like a desirable ideal. Its status as an “inherent normative good” is often associated with other values such as truth-telling, honesty, or straightforwardness ( Viola and Laidler, 2021 , 23). Additionally, transparency is often misunderstood as revealing or showing the truth of something.…”