Steyerl, Hito “How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File” How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File. Challenging the use of surveillance technology and the politics of visibility in a multimedia performance.
Harvey, Adam “CV Dazzle” CV Dazzle. Harvey has developed a style of fashion and makeup that helios camouflage and disrupt facial recognition algorithms and software.
Paglen, Trevor “The Other Night Sky” The Other Night Sky. Revealing the hidden infrastructures of surveillance cameras, satellites and other military technology in images.
Roth, Evan “Graffiti Analysis” Graffiti Analysis. Using graffiti, a form of expression that has been criminalized and surveilled Roth documents and visualizes the different frequencies and patterns in different urban environments. Highlighting the tension between public expression and surveillance.
Blas, Zach “Contra-Internet” Contra-Internet. In this short film it critiques digital surveillance advocating for privacy and resistance by imagining alternative digital futures with speculative designs and artistic practices.
Hatrick, Jessica, and Olivia González. “Watchmen, Copaganda, and Abolition Futurities i US Televiion.” Lateral (2469-4053), vol. 11, no. 2, Fall 2022, p. N.PAG. EBSCOhost. -Copaganda.
Karakatsanis, Alec. “Alec’s Copaganda Newsletter.” Archive, https://equalityalec.substack.com/archive. -Copaga da.
Robinson, Nathan J. “How Media Copaganda Hides the Truth about the US Punishment Bureaucracy ❧ Current Affairs.” Current Affairs. – Copaganda.
Copaganda Definition. The police are legitimized by the state through what Correia and Wall name “copspeak”, defined as “a language that limits our ability to understand police as anything other than essential.”
Arnett, Chaz, “Race, Surveillance, Resistance” (2020). Faculty Scholarship. 1643. https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/1643.
Arnett argues that increasing surveillance capabilities disproportionately harms Black communities, reinforcing systemic criminalization and control. He highlights Baltimore as a case study of these dynamics and draws parallels with surveillance during slavery. The article covers historical surveillance practices during slavery, shifts in policing and surveillance post-emancipation, and the current use of digital and aerial surveillance in Baltimore. This work is essential for understanding how current surveillance practices reflect historical racialized control, and it provides a framework for analyzing the intersection of race and surveillance.
Browne, Simone. “Notes on Surveillance Studies Through the Door of No Return.” Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Duke University Press, Durham, 2015, pp. 31–62.
Browne argues that the slave ship Brooks, as a surveillance structure, predates the Panopticon and demonstrates how the surveillance of Black bodies was fundamental to modern disciplinary techniques. This chapter introduces the concept of surveillance as it relates to race, challenging traditional interpretations of panopticism by examining the slave ship as an archetypal site of surveillance.
Browne, Simone. “Everybody’s Got a Little Light under the Sun: The Making of the Book of Negroes.” Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Duke University Press, Durham, 2015, pp. 32–88.
Browne explores 18th-century “lantern laws” that required Black slaves to carry lit candles at night, arguing that these regulations represent an early form of racialized surveillance. This chapter introduces the concept of “lantern laws” and links them to ongoing racial profiling practices today.
Browne, Simone. “B®anding Blackness Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of Blackness .” Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Duke University Press, Durham, 2015, pp. 89–130.
Browne discusses the historical branding of slaves and connects it to modern biometric technologies, arguing that both serve to racialize and control Black bodies. This chapter introduces branding as both a physical and symbolic practice, relating it to contemporary biometric surveillance. Browne aims to show how digital epidermalization which is the exercise of power cast by the disembodied gaze of certain surveillance technology perpetuates racialized surveillance.
Browne, Simone. “What Did TSA Find in Solange’s Fro? Security Theater at the Airport .” Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Duke University Press, Durham, 2015, pp. 131–160.
Browne examines how airport security practices, such as invasive searches of Black women’s hair, function as racialized “security theater” reinforcing stereotypes. The chapter begins by discussing the experiences of Black women subjected to hair searches, using Solange Knowles’ experience as a case study. Browne aims to critique how racial stereotypes shape security practices, employing media analysis and feminist theory.
Ferguson, Andrew Guthrie. “Surveillance and the Tyrant Test.” Georgetown Law Journal, Volume 110, Issue 2, December 2021.
Ferguson argues that surveillance technologies risk creating a “tyrannical” power structure. He introduces the “tyrant test,” which emphasizes the need for structural checks on government power due to the inherent risks of abuse associated with surveillance technology. Ferguson’s introduction explores society’s dilemmas around police surveillance technologies like facial recognition and predictive policing.
Gamal, Fanna. “The Racial Politics of Protection: A Critical Race Examination of Police Militarization.” California Law Review, vol. 104, no. 4, 2016, pp. 979–1008. JSTOR.
Gamal argues that police militarization in the U.S. is not only a reaction to crime but a deliberate racial project that creates and reinforces racial hierarchies. This “racial politics of protection” determines which communities are under military-like control and which benefit from state protection.
Richards, Neil M. “THE DANGERS OF SURVEILLANCE.” Harvard Law Review, vol. 126, no. 7, 2013, pp. 1934–65. JSTOR.
Richards argues that surveillance threatens civil liberties by chilling free speech, enabling coercion, and distorting power dynamics between the watcher and the watched. He argues that surveillance poses risks to intellectual privacy and civil liberties, potentially altering power dynamics.
Sherman-Stokes, Sarah. “Immigration Detention Abolition and the Violence of Digital Cages.” University of Colorado Law Review, vol. 95, no. 1, 2024, pp. 219-266. HeinOnline.
Sherman-Stokes critiques ICE’s “Alternatives to Detention” (ATD) program, arguing that digital monitoring like GPS ankle shackles and invasive apps function as “digital cages.” She asserts these systems disperse and normalize the violence of immigration enforcement, broadening the carceral system while acting like they are humane reforms.
Southerland, Vincent, The Master’s Tools, and a Mission: Using Community Control and Oversight Laws to Resist and Abolish Police Surveillance Technologies (March 2, 2022). UCLA Law Review.
Southerland argues that police surveillance technologies, initially aimed at improving public safety, exacerbate racial inequity and reinforce oppressive policing practices. He discusses how laws like Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) aim to provide oversight but often fall short of abolitionist goals by legitimizing harmful technologies.