Drones, Resistance and Countersurveillance

Abstract

The chapter takes as its starting point the insight that contemporary surveillance is dynamic and not hierarchically structured and that (supervisory) power also generates resistance to the (same) power. The increasing power of the “new surveillance” therefore not only increases the capacity of the authorities (watchers) to monitor the watched majority but also carries an emancipatory potential. It focuses on surveillance arising from the bottom up-from the surveilled individual to corporate and state surveillance agencies. Firstly, it shows how drones are being resisted. It sheds light on forms of resistance to drones and the denial, subversion and distortion of drone surveillance systems. The objects of surveillance are empowered agents and active entities. They reflect on surveillance practices and attempt to escape and avoid them, thus drawing public attention to such practices as illegitimate, discriminatory or otherwise unfair. The chapter then shows the “other side” of surveillance: the co-option of drones for empowering ends. Drones are used to reverse the gaze and monitor those in power. such gaze is directed against state and corporate power and also in order to execute lateral surveillance. After offering several examples of empowering drone use and situating drones in the continuum from control to care, it shows the limitations of resistance by means of drones as the use of drones fails to address the underlying logic that feeds the “datasaur”-the tendency to submit everything to digitization-and intensifies corporate and state surveillance.