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Smile: You are on camera! The rise of participatory surveillance

( 2011-12-01) Nayar, Pramod K.

This essay uses the Unique Identification Number (UID) introduced recently in India to meditate upon the surveillance society. It opens with a discussion of identity and identification, arguing that identity cards and biometric data are forms of identification through which a society validates the claims of identity. In the second section it argues that biometric surveillance and data-collection reintroduce the body as the key component of human identity. In section three it makes a case of participatory surveillance where we all willingly subject ourselves to observation but are in turn ourselves observers in what is a new format of surveillance - diffused multiveillance. © www.rupkatha.com.