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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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Symbolic Interaction
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.
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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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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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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)
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)
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 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)
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)
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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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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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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