Signs of the Surveillant Assemblage: Privacy Regulation, Urban CCTV, and Governmentality
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663909345096 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | Randy Lippert |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
SIGNS OF THE SURVEILLANT
ASSEMBLAGE: PRIVACY
REGULATION, URBAN CCTV,
AND GOVERNMENTALITY
RANDY LIPPERT
University of Windsor, Canada
ABSTRACT
Signage in urban ‘open-street’ CCTV arrangements is explored in relation to the strat-
egies and forms of law brought to bear upon it. In the context of privacy regulation,
CCTV signage’s content reflects deterrence strategies and political subjectification
consistent with liberal governmentality. CCTV signage is evinced to be both an agent
and target of privacy and other forms of law and is therefore shaped and brought into
being by complex webs of legal governance. Rather than befitting panoptic arrange-
ments or merely amplifying CCTV’s deterrent effects, CCTV signage signals and serves
as a vital element of the surveillant assemblage. Possessing varied functions, including
features attributed to surveillance cameras, CCTV signage is a material means by which
the surveillance assemblage interfaces with the legal complex and by which urban time-
spaces are constituted. This analysis moves beyond previous accounts of regulatory
signage and has broad implications for governmentality and surveillance studies.
KEY WORDS
assemblage; CCTV; governmentality; liberalism; panopticon; privacy regulation;
regulatory signage; surveillance
INTRODUCTION
CCTV1SURVEILLANCE in the public spaces of cities is fast proliferating.
Where communication of CCTV’s immediate presence and status is
sought, such arrangements often rely on a vital but neglected technol-
ogy – the CCTV sign. In contrast to new surveillance technologies, such as
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES © The Author(s), 2009
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663909345096
biometric, genetic, and olfactory devices, with their astonishing capacities
and troubling penchants for social sorting and exacerbating inequalities, the
lowly pre-modern sign is easily deemed unworthy of study. When positioned
near or between cameras and those being surveilled, signage in ‘open-street’
contexts is usually assumed – when considered at all – to signal a CCTV
camera’s presence in order to amplify its deterrent effects. Yet, closer study of
‘open-street’ CCTV configurations begins to reveal this mundane mechanism
relating in complex ways with law and serving as a key element not primarily
of deterrence strategies or panoptic arrangements (see Koskela, 2003), but
instead of the surveillant assemblage (see Haggerty and Ericson, 2000).
This article explores CCTV signage in urban ‘open-street’ configurations
as a mundane ‘governmental technology’ (Dean, 1994). By adopting ‘govern-
mentality’ conceptual tools (see Dean, 1999; Rose, 1999) and drawing on em-
pirical research conducted in four Canadian cities, I seek to shed light on
CCTV surveillance, regulatory signage, and their relations with forms of law.
I argue that CCTV signs’ content and placement reveal plural rather than
singular governing strategies, a fact that troubles simple assertions about a
deterrent function in relation to conduct in surveilled spaces. Beyond deter-
rence, CCTV signage is tightly tethered to processes of privacy regulation
and political subjectification informed by liberal governmentality and seeks
to establish certainty about the start and end point of otherwise unruly
CCTV surveillance capacities. Thus, such arrangements often imagine both
a rational choosing subject of deterrence and a liberal citizen concerned with
maintaining privacy in public space. These two strategies are discovered in
varied proportion and on occasion in competition within ‘open-street’ CCTV
sites. If surveillance is increasingly about combining practices and devices
(Haggerty and Ericson, 2000), the sign is a means of its integration, a joint
that promises to lock elements in place on an ever-changing urban landscape.
CCTV signs are a material tool of assembly, a way of binding disparate plans
of action together, and therefore an element of the emergent ‘surveillance
assemblage’. This ‘loosely associated surveillance entity’ (Lyon, 2007: 95)
entails convergence of previously distinct surveillance arrangements (see
Haggerty and Ericson, 2000). The foregoing analysis foments, consonant
with its signalling of the surveillant assemblage, a decentring of both panoptic
arrangements and the CCTV camera therein as the archetypes of contem-
porary surveillance. Correspondingly, the findings encourage exploration of
the myriad ways the surveillant assemblage and the ‘legal complex’ (Rose
and Valverde, 1998) constitute and mutate with one another. While CCTV
signage is a technology, it is also a target of forms of law and is thus shaped
and brought into being by complex webs of legal governance. This analysis
also sheds light on regulatory signage more generally in showing this tech-
nology possesses both mental and material aspects and is not forever tethered
to specific governmental rationalities.
506 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 18(4)
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