An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control

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An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control (Full text)

The report contains seven substantive sections which cover respectively:

(i) The role and function of the technology of political control;

(ii) Recent trends and innovations (including the implications of globalisation, militarisation of police equipment, convergence of control systems deployed worldwide and the implications of increasing technology and decision drift);

(iii) Developments in surveillance technology (including the emergence of new forms of local, national and international communications interceptions networks and the creation of human recognition and tracking devices);

(iv) Innovations in crowd control weapons (including the evolution of a 2nd. generation of so called 'less-lethal weapons' from nuclear labs in the USA).

(v) The emergence of prisoner control as a privatised industry, whilst state prisons face increasing pressure to substitute technology for staff in cost cutting exercises and the social and political implications of replacing policies of rehabilitation with strategies of human warehousing.

(v) The use of science and technology to devise new efficient mark-free interrogation and torture technologies and their proliferation from the US & Europe.

(vi) The implications of vertical and horizontal proliferation of this technology and the need for an adequate political response by the EU, to ensure it neither threatens civil liberties in Europe, nor reaches the hands of tyrants.

The report makes a series of policy recommendations including the need for appropriate codes of practice. It ends by proposing specific areas where further research is needed to make such regulatory controls effective. The report includes a comprehensive bibliographical survey of some of the most relevant literature.



-- scott (hma5_5@hotmail.com), February 21, 2000


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