1984word "Social Control"

[davemarc]

The following excerpt about "social control" is from an essay called "Recent
Developments in Undercover Policing" by Professor Gary T. Marx.  I think it
might be of interest to those interested in Pynchon's remarks about 1984,
social control, and the Internet.

The book by Cohen is called Visions of Social Control.  It's from 1985--off
by just one year!

d.

*

In recent decades social control has become more specialized and technical
and, in many ways, more penetrating and intrusive.

Cohen (1985) offers a good discussion of this. One manifestation is the
expansion of undercover police practices as part of the rise of the new
surveillance (computer dossiers, electronic location monitoring, drug and
DNA testing, video and audio monitoring, etc.). The new surveillance tends
to be differentiated from the old surveillance by at least ten major
characteristics:
1. It transcends distance, darkness, and physical barriers.
2. It transcends time; its records can be easily stored, retrieved,
combined, analyzed, and communicated.
3. It has low visibility or is invisible.
4. It is involuntary.
5. It is preventive.
6. It is capital- rather than labor-intensive.
7. It is decentralized and often involves self-policing.
8. It triggers a shift from targeting a specific suspect to categorical
suspicion.
9. It is more intensive --probing beneath surfaces, discovering previously
inaccessible information.
10. It is more extensive --covering an ever enlarging number of spatial,
temporal, and functional areas.

web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/recent.html