Beverly Ferguson

On the flipside, I'm always astonished by how normative surveillance is in poverty-stricken communities. Surveillance is common place and many poor people are used to having to fork over tremendous amounts of personal information to get social services. And, in communities defined by practices like “stop and frisk,” the idea of not being watched and targeted is completely alien. So when these groups find out that the State is monitoring mediated interactions, why should they be surprised? Why should they react? From their perspective, it's just another tool for the State to do what they've always been doing, only perhaps without the direct costs to dignity that many of these people face on a regular basis. (...)