Spying on fellow citizens for a reward offered by the government has become an industry in South Korea. Spies, sarcastically called paparazzi, are regular people paid by the government to video tape their prey and deliver the evidence to collect the reward. The business is flourishing: target can be a factory releasing industrial waste into a river, a building owner keeping an emergency exit locked, or doctors and lawyers not providing receipts for payment. In the snooping business everything has its price from tossing a cigarette butt out of the window to teenagers kicking a ball into the neighbourhood’s feng shui. The rewards range from 4 euro for a cigarette butt tossed to 1.5 million euro for a disclosure of a corrupt public servant, as promises the local government in Seul. The effects of such government snooping or reward programs are discussed: the outsourcing of law enforcement to residents cause increasing financial burden to ordinary people; responsibilisation shift; increasing social inequality; and undermining social trust.
B.06 Other
COBISS.SI-ID: 1517646Technologically enhanced surveillance practices (TESPs) have penetrated into crime prevention mechanisms across all European countries. The paper tackles the cultural bias of contemporary literature that remains culturally biased to an Anglo-American milieu and that of the “older” EU member states by identifying, analysing, evaluating and comparing TESPs in Central and Eastern European countries. Factors justifying the geographical focus are the very rapid and profound political, economic, social and legal changes that marked the region in the last 20 years (e.g. the transition to a capitalist market economy, denationalization and privatization, a reduction of social rights, greater unemployment, fear from a powerful state, changes in crime figures and attitudes to crime). These factors have a significant impact on TESPs. They promote particular actors of surveillance, foster certain domains of surveillance and offer specific justifications of surveillance.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 1507662The paper offers insights in surveillance practices in the socialist Yugoslavia that was conducted under a very open legal framework. It was a very labour-intensive activity focused on providing national security with the help of wide network of informants. The role of the police and paramilitary forces was important later in history. They significantly determined the course of the Balkan war and later the development of the private security sector in the region. By presenting an overview of surveillance regime in socialism, during the Balkan civil war and in post-socialist transition the paper shows why the mainstream narrative about post-socialist transition as a “success story” is flawed. What we are witnessing today in the Western Balkans region, are weak nation states that cannot successfully defend themselves against state capture and private actors of surveillance.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 1483598