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The Control Narrative of the Internet

Author(s): David L. Altheide


Source: Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Spring 2004), pp. 223-245
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.2004.27.2.223
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The Control Narrative of the Internet


David L. Altheide
Arizona State University

This article examines how mediation and control operate in cyberspace


through a control narrative, or actors awareness and expectation that symbolic meanings may be monitored and used by diverse audiences for various purposes. A control narrative is implicated in numerous attempts and
logics to monitor and regulate Internet use. The control narrative is more
explicit as fear and control are reflexively joined to virtual communication.
The focus is on recent developments in surveillance, deception, and entrapment in Internet stings by formal agents of social control in the name of
protecting children from predators and pedophiles and U.S. citizens from
terrorism. Several implications of the control narrative for communication
are offered, along with questions for further research.

The FBI must draw proactively on all lawful sources of information to


identify terrorist threats.
John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General
This article examines some of the ways that mediation and control operate in cyberspace. I wish to address the increase in computer and Internet surveillance, monitoring, and control by users, the state, and business as features of mediated interaction, and to develop a conceptual linkage between a control narrative, visual
formats for interaction, and the social context of fear and risk management.
Control narrative refers to the relevance for the communication process and social
action of actors awareness and expectation that symbolic meanings may be monitored and used by diverse audiences for various purposes. I address these concerns
by clarifying the ongoing process that legitimizes surveillance in everyday life, including its acceptance as necessary and beneficial for the well-being of all citizens,
particularly the expansion of Internet surveillance and the use of Internet stings
by formal agents of social control (FASC).
Surveillance operates as a translucent veil of control that informs use of the Internet, including actors perceptions, communication styles, and content, reading, interpretation, and use. This examination of the Internet as a topichow it is constituted,

Direct all correspondence to David L. Altheide, School of Justice Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe,
AZ 85287-0403; e-mail: David.Altheide@asu.edu.
Symbolic Interaction, Volume 27, Number 2, pages 223245, ISSN 0195-6086; online ISSN 1533-8665.
2004 by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. All rights reserved.
Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press,
Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

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including social power, norms, values, and sanctions of control (Zimmerman and
Pollner 1970)focuses on state control and surveillance that is closely related to
the organization, licensing, monitoring, and control of information technology that
links computers with the Internet. More Internet users are aware that computer
and Internet hardware and software promote surveillance and monitoring. And
more users are taking this into account as they use the technology. The visual communication of the Internet exemplifies surveillance culture and a control narrative.
As many computer users have been surprised to learn, even private communication
over the Internet is actually and virtually public. This means that actors may normalize surveillance as inevitable, even though they take the monitoring into
account as they communicate and, indeed, may resist the surveillance activities. I
examine the nature of mediated communication and how it pertains to control in
view of state surveillance, deception, and entrapment by FASC in the name of protecting children from predators and pedophiles. I illustrate the control narrative
with an overview of Internet security and the paradox of privacy and violation, culminating in the rise of Internet stings. First, an overview of mediated interaction
may be helpful in setting the information stage or context for more explicit surveillance efforts by government and others.

THE CONTROL NARRATIVE AND MEDIATED INTERACTION


Attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, prompted state officials to expand control and surveillance over more communication media, particularly the Internet, while concerns about protecting children from pedophiles have resulted in
the use of filters (e.g., net nannies) to limit the information that is available.
Government and state surveillance of the Internet is only part of the control
story. The control narrative and surveillance on the Internet is a feature of mediated
communication and social identity. All communication is complex, but mediated
communication is even more so because it involves media and the formats that
guide social use.1 The communication process involves an actor taking into account
an audience by taking the role of the other, as outlined by Mead (Mead and Morris 1962) and articulated by Blumer (1962). Unlike face-to-face unmonitored interaction in which the audience is the other person, Internet communication involves
an array of known and unknown audiences. It encompasses the definition of the situation, identity, and what Schutz (1967) termed typification, or typical course of
action. If actors in Internet communication assume that comments will be seen and
interpreted by various audiences, some of which are unknown to them, and construct or adjust their presentations accordingly, then self-monitoring, auto surveillance (Marx 1988), and presentation of self is likely to be affected. Who we are,
what we state, what we intend, and what we mean is a feature of interaction, but the
nature of this interactionand with whomis problematic on the Internet, particularly when surveillance operators interpret and define the meaning of an act (e.g., a
salacious sexual comment) as evidenceindeed, the equivalentof behavior (e.g.,

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a physical sexual act). The control narrative is embedded in the actors awareness of
surveillance as a feature of Internet technology.2 Most of these elements that are involved in computer-mediated communication (CMC) were not present throughout
most of human history. As Anderson (1997:xiiixiv) has stated, The information/
communications revolution creates a vast and mysterious electronic landscape of
new relationships, roles, identities, networks, and communities, while it undermines
that cherished luxury of the modern self-privacy.
The identity process, or how we are known to others, reflexively joins the communicative act with the definition of the situation that is also influenced by a
broader context of meaning, memories, and history (Altheide 2000; Grodin and
Lindlof 1996; Holstein and Gubrium 2000; Kellner 1995; Wood and Smith 2001). As
Surratt (2001:218) observes, the key to this process is the actors identity, or that
part of the self by which he is known to others: defining the self and the generalized other in a meaningful way becomes one of the key problems of social order in
the highly modern world. For example, research on the changing nature and conceptions of identity suggests that broader social changes, including information
technology and popular culture, can affect the emerging conceptions of self in an
altered communications order (Altheide 2000; Cerulo 1997).
The control narrative of the Internet is shaped by the communication environment and shared experiences of its users. Each element that influences social interaction can be regarded as a potential contributor or mediator to interaction. The visual and temporal nature of computer interfaces mediates the communicative act.
Actors must develop sophisticated understandings, skills, styles, and even rhythms
for the operation of these interfaces in order to run a computer, as well as operate on-line (Altheide 1985). Moreover, the equipment, skills, and social capital essential for on-line participation are differentially accessible for social and economic
reasons (Pew Charitable Trusts 2002).
The challenge is to identify how mediation and control operates in cyberspace. A
concept that links individual use to organizational logic and routines is a technological seam, the uneasy fit between everyday life routines and technological formats
(Altheide 1998:224).
Technology provides one of many seams in social life. A seam is the intersection
between habit, attention and then adjustment. Suggestive of an architecture for
action, it is the meanings and perspective that permits the joining of something
new and different to what was established before. Seams are constituted when
contexts are joined with something new to affect social interaction. Often this
produces social change. Seams involve information and knowledge but a habit
and routine must arise to overcome the initial gap. Thus, change is layered,
with overlapping practices and language. Accordingly, seams and social change
go hand in hand. (Altheide 1998:22425; original emphasis)

For example, information technology does not fold smoothly into the social worlds
of youth colonized by school culture. Understaffed and undertrained teachers battle
creative youth who enjoy disrupting class and equipment (e.g., playing with tracking

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balls in a computer mouse). The use of computers in school classrooms has had to
adjust to a resistant youth culture that encourages taking computers apart, as
well as a tradition of educational funding that tends to not provide sufficient training for teachers to integrate computer technology into curricula.
The emergence of surveillance identity and the control narrative is part of the
technological seam of Internet communication. The technological seam is less about
adjustment over time than it is about the underlying tension between the rules of
social order and alternatives. As noted, Internet surveillance alters social meanings
as actors assume increasingly that they may be watched. Of course, actors may take
steps to resist the surveillance (Marx 2003).

NET LOGIC
Two important features of the Internet that contribute to the control narrative are
net logic and the visibility of Internet use. The control narrative is constituted by
the communication format of the Internet, described by Surratt as net logic that
must be considered in trying to understand the Internets place in the lives of those
who use it and the social relationships that are informed by it: the Internet is
unique not because it conquers space and time, but because it is the first strategy
that operates according to a many-to-many (one-to-one) communications pattern
or logic (Surratt 2001:42).
Voyeurism and surveillance are promoted by the visual character of Internet use
and the ease with which communication can be seen. Seekers may find what others
desire them to see, be it information or body parts. On the one hand, Internet users
may be viewed as communicative exhibitionistsin the sense that they communicate to be seen. Unlike the writer of a private note that is hand delivered to someone, an Internet writer does not assume that a message will be private, although it
may be coded and the author may seek anonymity. On the other hand, Internet
users are voyeurs, aiming to see others communications (Denzin 1995). Internet
browsers are aptly named as a kind of moving peephole looking for something
but finding anything. From this perspective, surfing the Net is a surveillance activity. Moreover, sender and message are linked inextricably through logic and electronic technology. I suggest that an adequate understanding of Internet communication should include analysis of all mediating influences and clarify how actors
awareness and use of surveillance and monitoring inform their communicative acts.
The increased opportunity to communicate exists in a context that limits communication. These new forms of communication have arisen during a period of heightened expectations of freedom and opportunity and the simultaneous campaign to
promote fear of the other, especially criminals (Altheide 2002b). Indeed, the expansion of surveillance throughout the social order (Marx 1988) involves much
more than crime; rather, the tools and perspectives of policing against crime have
been extended as a format of control to policing society more generally. Ironically,
it is the knowledge we have that is now being used as a foundation for more control,

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regulation, and surveillance. The preoccupation with protecting us from what is a


potential threat has been referred to as policing the risk society by Ericson and
Haggerty (1997) and others, who contend that postindustrial society is marked by
an expanding body of knowledge about risks.
Risk communication systems are entwined with privacy and trust. The more that
foreboding and fear lead people to withdraw from public involvement, the more
they value privacy and withdraw into privatized lifestyles. The greater the privacy, the greater the need for surveillance mechanisms to produce the knowledge necessary to trust people in otherwise anonymous institutional transactions. Paradoxically, these mechanisms intrude on privacy and are a constant
reminder of the uncertainties of trust. Yet it is only in a framework of trust that
patterns of risk can be adequately institutionalized and forms the basis of decisions. Privacy, trust, surveillance, and risk management go hand in hand in policing the probabilities and possibilities of action. (Ericson and Haggerty 1997:6)

Paradoxically, quick communication also leads to the fear of control by others (Altheide 2002b). As Lyon notes:
Surveillance today is a means of sorting and classifying populations and not just
of invading personal space or violating the privacy of individuals. In postmodernizing contexts surveillance is an increasingly powerful means of reinforcing
social divisions, as the superpanoptic sort relentlessly screens, monitors and classifies to determine eligibility and access, to include and to exclude. . . . Surveillance has become an indirect but potent means of affecting life chances and
social destinies. (2001:151)

The control narrative and surveillance is engendered in part by the visibility of Internet communication. On the one hand, we can see ones comments in text; on the
other hand, the communication process is visible, as when we view people at Internet cafs. The visibility of the communication act is becoming more pronounced
with changes in communication formats. For example, cell phone conversations can
be seen and heard by others; cell phone technology now also permits one to access
news reports, sports scores, and so on, via the Internet. Thus a unique feature that is
shared by the Internet and the cell phone is the visibility of communication (Altheide 2002c). The increasingly visual nature of the Internet is consistent with a
trend in media formats that emphasize brief, evocative messages rather than more
linear, referential information. An editor explained:
Back when Rolling Stone was publishing these 7,000-word stories, there was no
CNN, no Internet. And now you can travel instantaneously around the globe,
and you dont need these long stories to get up to speed. All the great media adventures of the 20th century have been visual, said Mr. Needham, 37, who grew
up in Cambridge, England. Television, movies, the Internet, theyre all visual
mediums, and I dont think people have time to sit down and read. The gaps in
peoples time keep getting smaller and smaller, and the competition is getting
more intense. Its one of the facts of media life. (Carr 2002:5)

Organizations and institutional contexts inform the nature and extent of individual use of this new technology. As works by Couch and others (e.g., Couch

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1984) have shown, regimes throughout history and across cultures have grappled
with the nature and consequences of controlling the technology (oral, print, or
electronic), process, and substance of communication. There remains the important question of how the dominant media are contextualized in a social order.
Couch (1990:112) advances the proposition that the relationship between the
media and social structures [is] multilateral; that the consequences of a medium
are different when it is contextualized by economic structures than when contextualized by state structures. . . . [When the latter,] it will reflect the interests of
state officials.
The state structure and organizations that contextualize these media require extensive control and surveillance. As Lessig (1999) has noted, commerce and government have a stake in the use and control of information technology. The rationale,
practice, and legitimacy of surveillance connect law and business. The equipment,
logic, and purpose of Internet use is for sale, but law helps to legitimize, support,
and sanction this purpose.
Control is implicated in rules, prescriptions, and proscriptions involving access,
presentation, and use of the Internet. An adequate sociology of the Internet must
consider how organizational contexts operate and inform its use (Katz and Rice
2002; Sieber and Schmiedeler 1996; Smith and Kollock 1999; Staples 2000). Organizational principles reflect numerous logics and technologies of control (Morgan
1983, 1997). A key feature of the Internet is that it is used by individuals but operated and controlled by organizations. The latter promote control of the former in
order to maintain order. Notwithstanding users resistance and innovations, over
time these guidelines and format preferences can regulate and define what is appropriate and proper Internet conduct. Nuances and intentions can be monitored and
objectified by traces, or records of use (Beniger 1986). Born of the risk society,
the control narrative reflects the sanctioning process of mediated communication,
including perceived and actual preparation, precautions, and consequences (e.g.,
being warned or fired about communicative behavior). After all, it is the technology and format of communication of the Internet that is helpful but can track or
profile at the same time. It is the communication format of the Internet, the logic of
its actual operation and use, that permits users to search and allows others to control. A supporter of Attorney General Ashcrofts call for more Internet authority
stated in reference to a popular Internet search engine, In the 1970s, maintaining a
clip file on someone was a big deal. Now, Google does it for you (cited in Savage
2002). Formal agents of social control do act as Big Brother on the Internet, in part
because [c]yberspace is deeply mired in consumerism surveillance and voyeurism
(Staples 2000), whereby software monitors ones presence in cyberspace for billing
and advertising purposes. However, the control narrative operates apart from Big
Brothers actions. It is consistent with Stapless (2000) notion of meticulous rituals
of power, or the small procedures and techniques that are ritualized and demand
compliance as part of a course of action (e.g., everyone must log in; please enable
cookies).

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SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL


It is becoming more acceptable to compromise privacy. On the one hand, information technology involves numerous electronic feedback processes that track messages but not necessarily meanings. On the other hand, the ease with which this is
done makes the organization and monitoring of such activities possible and desirable
if you can monitor, why not? The need to know has emerged in a context of popular
cultureinspired fear, dread, and victimization wherein cunning agentsat home
and abroadthreaten our security and exploit our private and consumer information for their own gain (Altheide 2002b; Furedi 1997; Glassner 1999). The rare instance of surveillance is gradually becoming the norm of surveillance in order to
prevent widely publicized threats that evoke fear. Surveillance is reflexively
joined to fear as audiences seek salvation from a popular culture world of threats
and danger, particularly crime and, more recently, terrorism. Fear promotes a quest
for security, which in turn relies on surveillance. But surveillance provides information that is interpreted through a frame of fear and dread. Thus the harder we try to
be safe, the more frightened we are, the more surveillance we seek, and the more
acceptable such scrutiny becomes. Yet our communication order is premised on the
assumption that we prefer privacy and privileged access even as we realize that we
do not. That produces a tension that is now being worked out as a feature of the
control narrative.
Indeed, the nature of privacy is changing because of this surveillance. Moving
well beyond the undercover police work captured by Marx (1988),3 surveillance is
tantamount to the precrime scenario in the movie Minority Report, a futuristic
account of how crime fighters rely on prescient observers, who can predict a homicide or assault and then intervene before the action is completed. Precrime, in the
form of surveillance, is now the official policy in the United States, particularly in
terms of the Internet.
The awareness of monitoring and surveillance informs all Internet communication. Actors enter cyberspace with varying awareness and intentions about surveillance by various audience members, and some clearly want to be observed and
even analyzed, albeit for different reasons and rarelyif everby formal agents
of social control. In many cases personae are being created for different communicative performances and audiences. This is apparent with sex performance online (Waskul 2002; Waskul, Douglass, and Edgley 2000), but it is also operating
more generally as a feature of a competent self, one who resists the voyeur and formal agents of social control. Internet users assume increasingly that someone is
watching, but they usually do not want to be watched, especially by formal agents
of social control. Realizing that the watching will not cease, individuals now assume
other identities, surveillance identities that will satisfy the search criteria yet not
implicate private selves. Many users have adopted false IDs in order to communicate anonymously. A spokesperson for a company that makes anonymizing software that creates digital pseudonyms believes that false IDs will be the norm in

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the future. [He] foresees a day in the near future when every citizen maintains
multiple identities for different online activitiesone to shop, another to deal with
government and perhaps several more for use in chat roomsas the only means of
keeping some control over what they reveal about themselves. People realize there
are all these different aspects to their identity online. . . . Identity management is a
skill not many of us have today, but well all have to develop it (Wood 2001:20).
State control agents mimic the duplicity of those they track and make deception
part of legitimate law enforcement. This is becoming quite common on the Internet. Typically, police officers (but also citizen vigilantes) using a deceptive and false
identity broadcast the availability of certain goods and services via the Internet.
This is done aggressively, using role playing, typical scenarios, presentations of self,
and relevant discourse and terminology to draw the interest of potential customersbuyers, who will be treated as offenders. Buys or meetings are arranged by the
provider of the service, who is usually a police officer, and arrests follow the exchange of money, another incriminating act, or information representing intent.
It is not always easy to fool those who are aware that they might be under surveillance. The surveillance game, or eliciting information to validate virtual identities, is played by suspects as well as police officers and others claiming to be
someone they are not. The game requires skill and, of course, extensive information about role enactment and self-presentation, including the time, place, and
manner of appearance. In the following example, a detective has to keep careful
notes about his her identity so that a suspect will not be able to cross him up
with questioning.
Three undercover officers in the New York Police Department spend their time
studying other things, like Prom Magazine, American Idol and the chatter at
the mall. It is their job to impersonate not cocaine smugglers, but teenage girls
and, sometimes, boysto serve as their invisible protectors. . . . Because adults
who want to prey on children are aware that people like Detective Smith and his
partners, Detectives Travis Rapp and Michael Gishner, are out there, it is very
important to keep those characters straight. They tell you in the training that
you can keep track by writing down, for example, Barbara, blue eyes, blond
hair, etc. But you would never remember, Detective Smith said, speaking in an
office almost as narrow as his computer screen is wide. His own method is to
model and name each character after a real woman he knows. Ill morph her
description down to that of an 11-year-old, he said. (Dewan 2003)

However, knowing about bra sizes, the latest trend in hot lipstick, and so on, is not
easy without advisers. The FBI used young girls as part of Operation Innocent
Images to help tutor them in youth culture trends, slang, and fashion. According
to a FBI spokesman:
We can teach agents how to be careful and make sure they are following the law
and how to arrest people. But how to convince people theyre a 13-year-old is
something we need help on.
Karen, Mary and Kristintheir last names have not been made publichave
toured the country giving tips to the feds, instructing them to read Teen People

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and other magazines for young people, and setting quizzes to monitor their
progress.
The girls were stunned at how poorly the adults did until they set to work on
them. They, like, dont know anything, Mary told the Post. Patiently, they tell
their charges that, no, Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson are not cool, and
George Clooney is not good-looking. Hes, like, 50! Karen said. (Gumbel
2003:13)

Governments favor more security and surveillance. Warranted or not, there is a


strong control and surveillance push that is part of the national security narrative,
partly authored by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Journalists noted
that the Bush administrations 2002 plan, The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, offers both economic and state rationales for control:
The Presidents Critical Infrastructure Protection Board is preparing the report,
and it is intended to create public and private cooperation to regulate and defend
the national computer networks, not only from everyday hazards like viruses but
also from terrorist attack. Ultimately the report is intended to provide an Internet strategy for the new Department of Homeland Security. . . . But Internet service providers argue that its data-monitoring functions could be used to track the
activities of individuals using the network. (Markoff and Schwartz 2002)

The public and visual nature of one-to-one communication on the Internet invites surveillance and control. The paradox of Internet security is that it requires violation and surveillance. On the one hand, consumer transactions require privacy
and confidence in security; on the other, users want protection from hackers and
others who may exploit commerce or national security or use the publicly available
access to defraud, intimidate, harass, and commit crimes. Deceptive communication
breaches trust and legitimacy and contributes to an expansion of social control and
surveillance. Efforts to monitor and regulate social behavior have reached the Internet (Lyon 2001; Staples 1997). Part of net logic includes awareness and anticipation by many that unintended consequences may result from surveillance and control by agents seeking to take advantage of their activities. These external controls,
monitors, and surveillance can mediate interaction insofar as an actor takes them
into account in defining a situation. For example, surveys indicate that 17 percent of
Internet users know someone who has lost a job because of computer infractions
(Pew Charitable Trusts 2002). Most Americans support law enforcement surveillance of criminals, yet want to protect their own privacy (Pew Charitable Trusts
2002; USA Today 2001).
The Internet provides opportunities to violate rules of use as well as challenges.
The game quality of hacking is a case in point. Hackers, or Internet users who violate conventional rules of use to disrupt codes and Internet communication formats, turn the civility of electronic participation on its head. They use the conventions and the control narrative to communicate and explore the architecture of
information and at the same time disrupt the electronic semantics in order to also
leave a messageexplicit or implicitto users and regulators that all communication

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is vulnerable to deviant rule use (Fox 2001). Government and security experts are
authorized and paid to intrude on hackers and nonauthorized parties, and FASC
are authorized to engage in surveillance of everyone and everything. Not surprisingly, there is also a good deal of countersurveillance going on in cyberspace as
hackers and corporate security experts do battle, as government snoops combat
nonauthorized parties from other countries, as citizen watchdogs and FASC snoops
monitor clandestine activities, and as private citizens are monitored by FASC.
Moreover, Internet users do not approve of Web-tracking and are suspicious of
private and governmental surveillance, although most citizens are not aware of the
range of electronic tracking methods (Electronic Privacy Information Center 2002).
However, Americans are willing to trade some of their freedoms for security, particularly in times of crisis. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, initial support increased for government surveillance and even a National ID, but this support
declined rather rapidly (Electronic Privacy Information Center 2002).
I am arguing, in effect, that the control narrative has always been part of communication structure and formats but that it has expanded over time with the development of electronic forms of communication such as the Internet. It may have been
the case for a long time that communication could be monitored by authorities, but
the actual use of such practices was presumed to be quite limited, often for officially
stated purposes, for example, national security and organized crime. And most
users of the technology were not overly concerned about official surveillance since
they did not place themselves in the class of suspects. Therefore, until recently the
control narrative was a mere abstraction, having little relevance for all but a handful of communicators and scholars concerned with surveillance and privacy
rights. In brief, then, while context and audiences experience with communication
formats is critical for other changes that will follow, these usually take time, are
often subtle, and therefore are difficult to examine.
The control narrative became apparent to the majority of American citizens when
the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001. It was not the attack per se
that reinvigorated this narrative but rather the reactions of formal agents of social
control, who quickly revealed a plan to monitor virtually all communication systems used by U.S. citizens and, equally as important, put all citizens on notice about
this intention. This communication control was associated with the passage of the
USA Patriot Act (USAPA) on October 26, 2001. This act expanded governmental
authority to engage in surveillance and challenge limits to civil liberties. While the
official claim was that such changes were necessary to guard against foreign terrorists, careful inspection of the language of the bill suggests that the focus is on limiting civil liberties that are often a hindrance to the efficient prosecution of crime.
Lyon (2003) argues that the web of surveillance has been expanded and used more
to group and categorize people, especially racial groups, for differential treatment.
The USAPA removes many of the checks and balances that prevented both police and the foreign intelligence agencies from improperly conducting surveillance on US citizens who are not involved in criminal or terrorist activity. For

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Internet users, it opens the door for widespread surveillance of web surfing,
e-mails and peer to peer systems. In addition, the protections against the misuse
of these authoritiesby the foreign intelligence agencies to spy on US citizens
and by law enforcement to use foreign intelligence authority to exceed their domestic surveillance authorityhave been greatly reduced. (Electronic Frontier
Foundation 2001)

These changes opened the floodgates to subpoenas to investigate numerous groups


and activities.
The amount of subpoenas that carriers receive today is roughly doubling every
monthwere talking about hundreds of thousands of subpoenas for customer
recordsstuff that used to require a judges approval, said Albert Gidari, a
Seattle-based expert in privacy and security law who represents numerous technology companies. (Benson 2002)

In addition to those contained in the USAPA, other changes were forthcoming as


well, changes that President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft said . . . are
needed to boost the FBIs arsenal against terrorism. But civil libertarians and others
complained that the FBI [was] being rewarded for its investigative lapses before the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks (House 2002).
To review the major point thus far: I am not merely claiming that cyberspace is
monitored. Following Couchs (1984) advice about the role of state structures and
context in shaping the use of information technology, it is important to trace how
the growing awareness and acceptance of surveillance is tied to certain events as
well as users routines, habits, and expectations about being protected from hackers, thieves, and now terrorists. The control narrative is constituted by users of this
technology through their awareness and acceptance of, and resistance to, various
forms of surveillance.
The control narrative reflects efforts to control and protect. Government agencies, along with commercial interests armed with cyber-snooping technology, are
entering what one critic called the Golden Age of Wiretapping (Benson 2002).
These acts were justified by Total Information Awareness (later renamed Terrorism
Information Awareness):
The TIA program will develop and integrate information technologies into fully
functional, leave-behind prototypes that are reliable, easy to install, and packaged with documentation and source code (though not necessarily complete in
terms of desired features) that will enable the intelligence community to evaluate new technologies through experimentation, and rapidly transition it to operational use, as appropriate. Accordingly, the TIA program will work in close collaboration with one or more U.S. intelligence agencies that will provide
operational guidance and technology evaluation, and act as TIA system transition partners. (www.darpa.mil/iao/TIASystems.htm)

The information access and monitoring that is made possible by the Internet as
well as cell phone technology is more insidious in the twenty-first century because it
is about control and making money. Business and FASC not only have interests in

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security and surveillance but also are often partners in a complex dance of communication and control. I turn to a few recent developments.

Carnivore, Magic Lantern, and Triangle Boy


The technology and sanctioning of the most egregious surveillance by FASC can
now legitimately be used against all American citizens. The following paragraphs
provide a brief history of three specific actions that were taken to be used against
criminals but are now sanctioned by the USAPA and the Total Information
Awareness plan established in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Most
Americans are unaware that the FBI and the CIA have not openly shared information in recent years. This reluctance has been driven by organizational turf wars as
well as by various legal directives, to protect civil rights and to prevent the kind of
witch-hunts that occurred previously in American history, for example, during the
civil rights movement of the 1950s through the 1970s. As one observer reported:
In the 60s and 70s, the FBI ran a massive program called COINTELPRO that
included secret investigations, surveillance, infiltration and disruption of political
activist groups that were not engaged in illegal conduct, including the civil rights
movement, anti-war protesters and feminists. . . . Consumers should know that
the information they give to America Online or Microsoft may very well wind up
at the IRS or the FBI, said Jeffrey A. Eisenach, president of the Progress &
Freedom Foundation, a think tank that studies technology and public policy.
Security is not costless. (Benson 2002)

Carnivore, Magic Lantern, and Triangle Boy were first designed with certain
people in mind, but the logic, technology, and application of their use was more
comprehensive. Each is designed to monitor computer keystrokes and messages
(MSNBC 2001). The first, Carnivore, is a program that required physical access to
the target computer. (Thus clandestine breaking and enteringeven with a court
orderwas necessary). After news organizations broke the story about this software that could snoop on ones e-mail and Internet use, the FBI addressed their
work on the project:
Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled FBIs system to covertly search E-mail raises privacy, legal issues. This story was immediately followed by a number of similar reports in the press and other media depicting our Carnivore system as something ominous and raising concerns about
the possibility of its potential to snoop, without a court order, into the private
E-mails of American citizens. . . .
In response to a critical need for tools to implement complex court orders,
the FBI developed a number of capabilities including the software program
called Carnivore. Carnivore is a very specialized network analyzer or sniffer
which runs as an application program on a normal personal computer under the
Microsoft Windows operating system. It works by sniffing the proper portions
of network packets and copying and storing only those packets which match a
finely defined filter set programmed in conformity with the court order. This filter set can be extremely complex, and this provides the FBI with an ability to

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collect transmissions which comply with pen register court orders, trap & trace
court orders, Title III interception orders, etc. (Kerr 2000)

Magic Lantern was described by Leyden (2002) as an extension of the Carnivore


Internet surveillance program [that] takes the idea one step further by enabling
agents to place a Trojan on a targets computer without having to gain physical access. However, the virus detection programs available on most computer systems
are capable of detecting this software. Ironically, the confidence and trust of software manufacturers could be compromised if word got out that they had cooperated with the FBI in installing a virus. Attempts to institutionalize the control narrative
required compliance from software manufacturers, although not all were persuaded
initially:
Prior to the FBIs official disclosure, several major antivirus companies told
news sources . . .that they would not aid the FBI in allowing its viruses any special advantage over other viruses and worms, saying that selective virus interception would diminish public confidence in the effectiveness of their security products. (Weisman 2001)

Leyden (2001) reported that a chief researcher at Symantecs antivirus research


laboratory told him, If it was under the control of the FBI, with appropriate technical safeguards in place to prevent possible misuse, and nobody else used itwe
wouldnt detect it. . . . However we would detect modified versions that might be
used by hackers. Leyden continued: Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant
at Sophos, disagrees. He says it is wrong to deliberately refrain from detecting the
virus, because its customers outside the US would expect protection against the Trojan. Such a move also creates an awkward precedent.
Carnivore and Magic Lantern were largely underground operations initiated by
social control agencies. Their nature and relevance for privacy, surveillance, and civil
liberties was not widely known. Indeed, their use violated the spirit if not the letter
of several laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. However, the
context of surveillance and control changed after the infamous terrorist attacks of
9/11/01. As reported by Markoff and Schwartz, an official with a major data services
company compared the Bush administrations very public proposal to monitor the
Internet with the clandestine operations of Carnivore and Magic Lantern:
Part of monitoring the Internet and doing real-time analysis is to be able to track
incidents while they are occurring, the official said. The official compared the
system to Carnivore, the Internet wiretap system used by the F.B.I., saying: Am
I analogizing this to Carnivore? Absolutely. But in fact, its 10 times worse. Carnivore was working on much smaller feeds and could not scale. This is looking at
the whole Internet. (2000)

But this is only part of the story. Another part of the story is that the CIA and
FBI are in conflict about surveillance and control. While the FBIs interest has been
in developing Magic Lantern to monitor computer use, the CIA has developed software to avoid the FBIs surveillance program. The CIA has had a hand in developing

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more software that will override Carnivore and Magic Lantern. A CIA-backed software company, SafeWeb, created Triangle Boy, which enables people in tyrannical countries to gain access to blocked Internet sites.
Triangle Boy operates much like a mail forwarding service. Each user request to
view a Web page is scrambled and randomly sent to another machine, which actually performs the request, returning the data to the original user. Triangle Boy
is very popular inside China, and the Chinese government is working hard on
ways to counter secure access to the Internet. (Smith 2001)

A potential problem is that terrorists also could use Triangle Boy to avoid detection
by the FBIs Magic Lantern (although officials deny that this is likely).
Ironically, many inside the computer security field declined to describe ways
to stop Triangle Boynot for technical reasons but for political reasons.
Software experts are usually anxious to publish flaws inside Microsoft operating systems or other major software packages. Yet this is not the case for
Triangle Boy. Normally, Im all for publishing flaws in software, but on this
one I have to vote against, stated one computer security expert located in
the Netherlands. The Chinese finally have access to the Internet. The flaws
could be used by the Chinese government to block the Internet once again.
(Smith 2001)

It is an understatement that surveillance is part of the effective environment of


cyberspace (Pfuhl and Henry 1993). As one observer cautioned, The bottom line
here is that companies and individuals will be responsible for protecting themselves
from both cyberterrorism and the governments response to it (Weisman 2001).
It is clear, then, that the Internet mediates interaction in several ways. On the
one hand, certain kinds of monitoring are not new to Internet users; most simply
take it for granted that various businesses, organizations, and universities collect information from them and sell pieces of their social identity for marketing and
cash. On the other hand, the mediation of Internet interaction goes well beyond
buyer beware: it extends to the communicative foundations of trust that may be
used to trick and deceive actors.

Internet Stings
It is one thing to monitor behavior that occurs; it is quite another to promote
banned behavior so as to control it. Business has commercialized cyberspace; Internet stings have helped to criminalize it. The control narrative becomes more complex and more visible as users intuit the logic that electronic paths leave traces and
run both ways. Communication is objectified and can be traced; words become
deeds under cyberscrutiny. Privacy all but vanishes on the Internet. A cry in a dark
alley can be heard; a cry on the Internet can be traced in cyberspace. Moreover, the
meanings of things are also deciphered to serve the purposes of investigative audiences. Just as encrypted credit card numbers are virtual cash, bytes-as-words are encrypted as intent-and-behavior. With the control narrative embedded increasingly

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in the technology and techniques of electronic communication, the major issue is


how it will be used and on whom (Lessig 1999).
Because virtually everyone who uses an Internet search engine is gathering information that is publicly available, formal agents of social control reason that anyone should be able to do so. A law professor, who did not regard the new FBI Internet surveillance as unconstitutional, said, [I]f sleazy credit card companies can
look up our supermarket or other purchases, then I see nothing wrong at first
blush with letting the FBI agents do the same thing (House 2002). Many Americans share this sentiment, particularly when it comes to preventing crime and protecting their children from pornography. What the law professor did not say is that
credit card companies and other businesses have produced, lobbied, and paid for
many of the laws and regulations that govern the Internet and other technologies.
The concern with sleazy surveillance extends beyond credit card companies
and FBI agents to the monitoring and deception practiced by law enforcement officials in setting up Internet stings. The control narrative emerged in surveillance
practices with outsiders in mind. After all, it is the deviants, criminals, and perverts who justify citizens concerns about a compromised moral order. Internet
stings have been conducted by FASC on topics ranging from prostitution, escort
services, and child pornography to gay chat rooms, drugs (including Viagra), computer software, stolen goods, stolen credit cards, fraudulent IDs, satellite dish cards,
animal videos, and stock scams.
Internet stings to police deviance and risk are a technological fix to what are
clearly diverse interests and perspectives on many facets of social life, including sexuality. But deviant acts and definitions in the risk society rely more on technology
and less on moral persuasion. Surveillance is routinely used as risk management:
Risk communication systems turn the moral discourse of deviance into a utilitarian
morality of probability calculus. The systems make up people more according to the
formers internally referential systems of rationality than in terms of extrinsic moral
questions of deviance. People are panoptically sorted according to utilitarian
criteriaas more or less stable, bright, strong, efficient, useful, and so oncreating
the transmission society of risk career tracks. . . . Deviance becomes a technical
problem that requires an administrative solution, rather than an occasion for expressing collective sentiments and moral solidarity, which are relegated to mass
media morality plays through which people remember values that are increasingly at odds with those of other institutions. (Ericson and Haggerty 1997:448)

Stings are commonly used to protect children from on-line predators and pedophiles. These stings tend to focus on participants in chat rooms, Web pages that feature sex tours or travelingacross town or around the worldto meet children
for sex or pornographic purposes, and Web sites on which information and materials are exchanged about child pornography and child or adult prostitution. Like all
stings, the intent is to create a false scenario and opportunity for a crime to be committed. Internet stings involve providing information about any regulated bait
that may be merchandise, activities, or opportunities.

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Undercover sting operations appear to have increased dramatically over the past
forty years (Marx 1988), especially since the mid-1990s. Virtually every major city in
the United Statesand several small oneshave used the Internet to conduct sting
operations. Sting operations are easy to sell to audiences consuming popular culture
and the discourse of fearthat is, the pervasive communication, symbolic awareness, and expectation that danger and risk are a central feature of everyday life (Altheide 2002b). Stings that target evil and corrupters of children have been deemed
acceptable by 92 percent of Americans (Pew Charitable Trusts 2002). As a federal
prosecutor put it, There are only two ways to do these cases. . . . A sting operation
or wait till a kid gets hurt (Stern 2002).
The control narrative becomes a feature of identity that is shared by the observers and the observed. Resonating with vocabularies of motive (Mills 1959) about
immoral character and social disorder, the observed are cast as blameworthy and as
illegitimately using technology to deceive those with whom they communicate.
The concern about children is a feature of the discourse of fear that calls for
more control (Altheide 2002a). Although officials estimate that a very small fraction of sexual abuse victims began their relationships on the Internet (5 of 4,000 in
Chicago; Miller 1999), public perception is that it is rampant. Moral entrepreneurs
promoting sensational news reports have prompted officials to spring into action.
Operating under various names (e.g., Operation Landslide, Innocent Images), federal and state police increasingly are in the sting business. Even before the terrorist
attacks cemented the perception that everyday life is dangerous and evil predators are lurking everywhere, FASC were given substantial support to crack down on
child molesters and perverts. Innocent Images, for example, is an annual $10 million
FBI operation that sprang from the 1995 Innocent Images National Initiative (IINI):
The purpose is to
identify, investigate, and prosecute sexual predators who use the Internet and online services to sexually exploit children;
establish a law enforcement presence in the Internet as a deterrent to subjects
that use it to exploit children; and
identify and rescue witting and unwitting child victims. (www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/cac/
innocent.htm)
One of the first FBI operations under Innocent Images was Operation Candyland,
named after an E-group Web page oriented to posting messages and images about
children. The FBI pursued some 7,000 e-mail addresses4,600 in the United States.
As of March 2002, 231 searches of computers had been conducted and eighty-six individuals were charged in twenty-six states (www.fbi.gov/pressrel/candymanhome.htm).
Like the undercover police officers studied by Marx (1988) who were often spying
on other undercover police officers, Internet police are often talking to themselves,
Agents posing as teens almost certainly outnumber actual teens in many of the
Internets seedier chat rooms these days. And though would-be sexual predators

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are surely aware of this ploy, the number of them stepping into these digital
traps continues to soar. . . . Its probably overkill, said Shari Steele, director of
legal services for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. At least half the 13-yearold girls in chat rooms are probably policemen. (Miller 1999)

The surveillance is very real in Internet stings, although the characters are just that:
caricatures of stereotypes of child molesters and pedophiles. While laws were established to protect real persons from those intending to harm them, the mediated nature of the Internet warrants presentation of identity as one thing when,
in fact, it may be something else: it may be a middle-aged FASC rather than a
thirteen-year-old girl or boy.
This point was made in a case in Wisconsin when the accuseds attorney argued
that no crime could have occurred since the intended victim was virtual and not
real, although he did travel to a hotel room where he believed that an encounter
would follow. The defense attorney argued that one may have also had a change of
heart due to guilt, shame, remorse, or fear of getting caught. Attorneys claimed that
the law should be overturned.
The massive news reports about threats to children have spurred some citizens to
set up their own Internet sites and pose as available victims. Thirty-seven-year-old
Julie Posey, a Colorado grandmother, regularly signs on to various Internet sites as
Kendra, a fourteen-year-old girl who is looking for a good time. When strangers
bite, she entices them, sets up a meeting, and alerts police, who move in for the bust.
She has done this nearly two dozen times and joins forces with other individuals
and groups around the United States such as Predator-Hunter, Soc-Um, and Cyberarmy Pedophilia Fighters. One of the largest groups is Cyber-Angels. This spinoff of
the Guardian Angels boasts nearly ten thousand members.
As the reach of the Internet grows, Posey counts herself among a handful of private citizens who have assumed the role of online crime fighters, hoping to
smoke out sexual predators and traders in kiddie porn. They say they fill the gap
that many local police departments leave because of meager resources. (Leonard
and Main 2002: A1)

Cyber vigilantes (e.g., Perverted Justice) posing as young teens in chat rooms
also work with local TV stations to set up Internet stings. Typically, an unsuspecting
man is enticed to go to an address to meet a teenage girl, only to be met by a TV reporter with a camera. Despite objections by police officials, the nightly newscast
promotes itself by raising public awareness of this issue, and the suspects name
and photo may also be posted on a Web page (Straziuso 2004).
Police officers may decry such cyber-vigilantism, but they enlist the help of the
public routinely. Posey offers seminars to teach officers about computer enticements. Described as a bulldog by a child abuse investigator whose office gave her
an award, Posey enthusiastically pursues her cyber-sleuthing calling without leaving
her house:
Its there that Posey spends about 40 hours a week trolling the Net. When the
chat rooms are silent, she turns to her Web site, www.pedowatch.org, a one-

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woman watchdog operation that has passed hundreds of tips to police. She finances her detective work through banner ads on the site, which have brought in
as much as $1,000 a month. (Leonard and Main 2002:A1)

There have been other Internet stings that aim to catch those who visit illegal
Web pages. In one of these, supported by the FBIs Innocent Images cyberpatrol,
New Jersey police closed down a pornographic Web site and arrested its operators.
FASC restarted it within two months using the same domain and explained to
surfers that the site had been down but was now open for business. They invited
prospective subscribers to join for a $19.99 membership fee and share their materials of prepubescent males. Law enforcement officials throughout the world seized
computers in sixteen nations and twenty-nine states. The suspects included a
teacher, a principal, a police officer, and a firefighter (Wire Services 2002).
Another Web page sting trapped a journalist, Larry Matthews, who had published several reports on pedophiles and was conducting research on the subject.
Matthews joined a Web site and frequented chat rooms that traded child pornography because he felt that it was a good method of acquiring information: He told
prosecutors that conventional research methods for his latest project, like posing
questions as a journalist in open chat rooms, were unsuccessful and that to delve
deeper, he needed to assume the persona of a trader in child pornographic images
(Janofsky 1999:A17). After his arrest, Matthews was not permitted to use the conventional journalistic defense of First Amendment rights and was convicted and
sentenced to eighteen months. This case suggests that the tradition of the Internet
sting is still under construction. Surveillance as a pretext for controlling crime and
pedophiles may become a model for investigating participants in other activities
that float in an expanding cauldron of deviance and suspicion.

CONCLUSION
Increasingly, fear and control are reflexively joined to virtual communication. I
have addressed some issues about mediated interaction and the relevance of communication processes on the Internet for surveillance practices by FASC and other
organizations. A control narrative is implicated in numerous attempts and logics to
monitor and regulate Internet use.
The Internet operates in a context of organizational and institutional practices
that inform but do not determine individual use. I have suggested that the organizational control of the Internet and individual initiatives and use constituted a technological seam, or the uneasy fit between everyday life routines and technological
formats, in which symbolic pieces of everyday life are unevenly matched, often not
meshing with organizational ideals, yet showing the prevailing organizational assumptions and enacted priorities. It is important to investigate how the Internet as a
resource may reflect our understanding that it increasingly is subject to organizational control and surveillance.

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Social change occurs when seams permit melding of something old with something different to make something new. But the mere existence and availability
of something different does not guarantee that it will be joined to social practices. It is not the mere existence of a new thing, but rather, how it is manifested in social action. It is such practices, which constitute the seam. In addition to essential physical and mental capacity, the culture must contain an
available logic, narrative structure, mythology, and discourse of difference and
novelty as something that is possible, indeed preferable, and useful. Even
then, there will be widespread and ambiguous negotiations as to what have we
here, whats this about. In this sense, it is not inventions that are sociologically interesting, but rather, how their application influences social action. And it
is not technology that is sociologically important, but how it might affect social
action. (Altheide 1998:225)

A society may be known by its control narratives and logics, particularly their
reach across institutions and into everyday life (Marx 1988; Naphy and Roberts
1997; Staples 2000). During the Victorian era, the magic lantern provided entertainment and awe for audiences who were unfamiliar with technology that made images move. The illusion is a feature of the physiology (natures technology) of the
eye that cannot detect gaps between still pictures. Slowing the process down
shows the illusion for what it is. Today millions of actors use the Internet to produce
messages and images that may be seen by some people who sell or buy and by others
who would censor, trick, and punish the messengers. The constant is the potential,
practice, and, increasingly, the awareness of policing. While Big Brother continues
to be implicated in surveillance, Internet policing has been internalized and integrated with virtually all aspects of its use.
I have suggested that Internet users are voyeurs and exhibitionists; we watch
others, are seen watching others, and want to be seen. Ours is a society that relies
on dataveillence, or the widespread mining and sharing of consumer information
(Clarke 1984; Staples 2000). Even as I write this, my computer jar fills with cookies
sent by technological voyeurs to monitor and track, and ads appear about home
surveillance cameras. What will we get back from a message sent, who will see it,
for what purpose, and will there be consequences?
Internet technology, formats, and the push to police risks in a societal context
grounded in fear mediate interaction on the Internet (and elsewhere). While the existence of the Internet may be unimaginable without extensive security, it is security
that has produced some of the paradoxes addressed above. Policing the risk society
has created additional risks of not only compromising privacy, stifling curiosity and
adventure on the Net for fear of detection, embarrassmentwhat Marx (1988)
termed auto surveillancebut also routinizing deception as people create false
identities for specific audiences at certain sites. Notwithstanding the relevance of
occasional deception in carrying out diplomacy and some negotiations, society and
sociability depends on getting it right; shared meanings and intentions are foundational. Social life cannot flourish for long through fraudulent communication. We
live in era of increased fraudulent communication whereby widespread false identity

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presentation and eavesdropping promote communicative disruption. Ultimately,


people are helping to normalize communicative control. Crises of the day (e.g.,
terrorist attacks, control of children) are treated with an Internet twist. Indeed, TV
newscasts invite audiences to log on to Web sites to find out more. Similar to the
concern about television in an earlier time, parents are instructed to watch their
children and use Internet filters to keep them away from inappropriate sites, and
FASC want to monitor the Internet, control its use, engage in surveillance of everyone.
Numerous research questions accompany the casting of Internet communications as part of an ecology of communication and control. Applying a mediated interaction perspective to Internet use suggests such queries as, How do Internet users
perceive and account for surveillance and control by friends, businesses, and
FASC? What are the organizational consequences of such surveillance and control?
How does such control inform actors efforts to manipulate their own and others
identities? Over what aspects of Internet and electronic communication is this control manifested? How do users resist and even subvert the control narrative and
logic? How is other communication influenced by actors awareness and use of the
control narrative? And how is Internet surveillance tied to other aspects of social,
economic, and political action and policy? These and many other questions should
be addressed using a variety of research methods, including field and case studies, if
social scientists hope to understand the social relevance of the Internet.

Acknowledgments: A draft of this article was presented at the annual meeting of


the American Sociological Association, Chicago, Illinois, August 1719, 2002. I would
like to thank Gary Marx and the anonymous reviewers for Symbolic Interaction for
their helpful suggestions.

NOTES
1. A theoretical rationale informs the orientation and approach to an examination of Internet
communication as mediated interaction (Altheide 1987, 2000; Grodin and Lindlof 1996; Liska
and Baccaglini 1990; Waskul, Douglas, and Edgley 2000).
2. I approach information technology from an interpretive perspective grounded in phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and existential sociology (Kotarba and Johnson 2002). The general
perspective joining substantive concerns about information technology with methodological
and conceptual views of the social world is perhaps best captured by analytic realism:
Analytic realism assumes that the meanings and definitions brought to actual situations are produced through a communication process. As researchers and observers become increasingly aware
that the categories and ideas used to describe the empirical (socially constructed) world are also
symbols from specific contexts, this too becomes part of the phenomena studied empirically, and incorporated into the research reports. (Altheide and Johnson 1994:487)

3. My focus on surveillance is informed by the work of Marx (1988, 2003), Staples (1997, 2000),
and Ericson and Haggerty (1997). Their studies are informed by interactionist precepts, although their assessments of the nature and impact of security differs in important ways. In general, Marx regards security operations as works in progress, always promising more than they
deliver and often confounded by creativeand resistantsocial actors who disable cameras,

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use them for their own purposes, and so on. Staples, who examines surveillance from the standpoint of Foucaults panopticon, tends to view contemporary surveillance efforts as more effective, particularly in promoting self-regulation. Ericson and Haggerty (1997) focus on the institutional arrangements that have emerged from a history of social control efforts, including the
discourses of power and control. This approach is consistent with Ericsons extensive work on
social control (Ericson, Baranek, and Chan 1987, 1989, 1991).

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