Voluntary surveillance

In a way, the message that Wolfgang Sofsky delivers throughout the pages of his new book echoes the famous aphorism of Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian in his fable The Cricket : “ to live happily, let’s live hidden “. But the lightness of the fabulist’s remarks is opposed here by the seriousness, even the pessimism of the reflections carried out by the German philosopher and sociologist.

The tone is set from the first chapter in which the author evokes the actions of a certain Anton B., who leaves his home to begin his working day after having submitted his “ offspring » at nursery school. This evocation is of course only the pretext for an enumeration of the multiple devices which, without us always being aware of it, locate, record, scrutinize and control our daily behavior, including the most trivial – video cameras, computers, terminals. banking, malicious computer programs, road radars, smart cards, etc. At the end of the day, Sofsky writes, Anton B. feels a certain uneasiness when he perceives that he has not had “ the slightest moment of true solitude “. But, the author immediately adds, this lucidity is lacking in most people because “ the glass citizen appreciates the facilities brought to him by the digital age. He renounces, without finding anything wrong with it, being anonymous, inaccessible, outside the field of observation » and, even more, “ he doesn’t even realize that he has something to defend » (p. 19). It is this indifference that Sofsky denounces in this new opus. Because, for this recognized specialist in violence and the concentration camp system, the most firmly established democracies are now developing multiple surveillance practices which tend to strip the individual of this fundamental freedom: that which consists of being able to have a space of one’s own, a “ intimate sphere » impregnable.

To read Sofsky, however, what constitutes today a “ major political risk » (p. 161), it is not so much the advent of an Orwellian world subject to the omnipresence of “ Big Brother » – even if numerous developments by the author seem to give substance to this hypothesis – that the installation of a type of society closer in certain respects to that described by Kafka in The Trial. In the Kafkaesque universe, the hero, Joseph K. – whose name is reduced to an initial, like Anton B. – is accused, then condemned for no apparent reason. He comes up against an absurd and rigid bureaucracy in which no one ever tells him what the charges are against him. In a way, everything happens as if this bureaucracy had information on its behalf, information collected without its knowledge and over which it would have no control. Now, this is indeed the danger which also awaits the “ glass subject “, explains Sofsky, because “ people leave more traces than they think » (p. 19). With this consequence: as these personal data accumulate and diversify, it is ultimately the right to be forgotten and to forgive which diminishes, at the risk of making “ glass citizen » the prisoner of his past.

However, according to the author, we are all complicit in this disastrous development which makes the citizen more and more transparent to others and, therefore, more fragile. On the one hand, in fact, the exposure of oneself and the display of personal data on the Internet, the communication frenzy, within social networks in particular, but also the quest for media visibility or notoriety, which sometimes borders on “ triumph of shamelessness “, have weakened the “ walls » which had been erected to delimit and protect the space of personal life. “ The desire to be someone has long taken precedence over the sense of privacy », writes Sofsky (p. 21), who emphasizes that this exhibitionism and this publicization of private life could soon make any form of surveillance useless. On the other hand, it is the aspiration for greater security and protection which increasingly threatens what the author calls “ protected information area “. In other words, instead of protecting themselves against state intrusions into their private lives, individuals seek protection from the state at all costs and, to do so, agree to hand over quantities of personal data. And all the more so since “ the State itself produces the evil it intends to combat » (p. 32) because its interventions fuel mistrust, suspicion and fears, which, in turn, give rise to additional prohibitions, norms and controls. In fact, explains Sofsky, because the modern State can no longer rely on the discipline and obedience of each individual, it maintains anxiety and creates a “ climate of permanent alert » which favors the installation of a new type of political domination, based on generalized surveillance.

It is true that the argument according to which “ we sacrifice the free society on the altar of the security state » (p. 151) is not, in itself, very original. But at a time when, for example, French parliamentarians are debating a biometric identity card project, a device presented as a means of better protecting everyone’s identity, we sense that Sofsky is highlighting developments here. very worrying. And from this point of view, his book, served by limpid and incisive writing, offers very suggestive reflections on the growing vulnerability of these private spaces which are the refuge of our freedoms – whether it is the body, the privacy, interpersonal communication or home. He also underlines the possible excesses of a “ Preventive state “, which would not only be aimed at the sick or the “ deviants » but who, in the name of security, would recruit everyone, with the project “ to watch over good morals and ensure the production of virtuous individuals » (p.76). In the same vein, the author underlines, not without reason, that companies share with public administrations this “ ideal of the glass citizen », a guarantee of better control of their employees and good anticipation of the desires of their customers. “ For the institutions of political and economic power “, writes Sofsky, “ the private sphere, freedom and autonomy are the irritating relics of an era when social spaces still existed beyond the state and the market » (p. 150).

But if the book is full of stimulating reflections, it nevertheless struggles to offer the reader a truly convincing argument. The subject is in fact a little disjointed, to the point that we are not always able to firmly connect the different chapters to the thesis which underlies the work. In addition, the author alternates theoretical considerations (on property, secrecy, the body, freedom, etc.) where we perceive the influence of Norbert Elias, Erving Goffman or Michel Foucault, among others, and developments of a more journalistic style which turn out to be very schematic, even caricatured, here and there. In this regard, the absence of footnotes or references – which Sofsky has chosen to bring together and comment on at the end of the volume in a sort of appendix chapter, which is also very well done – does not contribute to clarifying the register adopted by the author. So that his remarks disturb or seduce, depending on the case, without always demonstrating what is being put forward. This is the case, for example, when Sofsky speaks of the installation of a “ soft and legal totalitarianism » (p. 77) blithely freeing himself from the rights of individuals, or when he denounces a “ politics of thought » which, by means of censorship, propaganda and pedagogy, colonizes the imagination and tends to “ teach (people) what they have the right to think » (p. 124). Certainly some of these propositions are not totally unfounded, but they would have merited an analysis that was both more in-depth and more empirically supported – which the author has avoided here. In fact, in this work he offers a disembodied and unnuanced painting of a tutelary and invasive power which feeds on the tragic docility of “ glass citizen “. At the same time, it obscures the initiatives which, for many years, have contributed in particular to strengthening the rights of individuals or to establishing a “ glass administration “. However, even if these measures were insufficient in view of the threats that the connection of files and systems currently represents, which is very likely, the radicality of Sofsky’s indictment tends, ultimately, to weaken his criticism of the ‘ « Security state “.

What actually unites the author’s argument lies, it seems, in a deliberately libertarian bias, drawn in particular from the analyzes of Wilhelm von Humboldt – analyzes where we find, writes Sofsky, “ all objections to the internal imperialism of modern state power » (p.164). Hence his virulent criticism of all forms of state intervention, those of the welfare state as well as those of the rule of law or justice. ; hence, also, his fierce defense of private property, which “ provides a material basis for the private citadel (and) allows the individual to keep society at bay » (p.101). This intellectual orientation is naturally found in the chapter of the forms of resistance that Wolfgang Sofsky calls for to restore “ glass citizen » this space of freedom which would have been taken away from him. According to the author, in fact, the action of the courts – whose role is to ensure above all the application of the law – is unsuitable to fully guarantee the freedoms of each person. ; and likewise, collective protest, as useful as it may be, will not be enough to reverse the observed trend because, he explains, the defense of freedom and private life is not, as such, quite a mobilizing cause. This is why, in the wake of the analyzes of Georg Simmel, who emphasized that every society functions thanks to a “ quantum » of secrets, Sofsky urges his readers to preserve their personal lives and private secrets from interference at all costs. Because “ he who believes he has nothing to hide has already given up his freedom and refuses to lead his life under his own aegis » (p. 155), the author then calls for discretion, and even dissimulation. He indeed pleads for social behavior based not only on increased vigilance in terms of dissemination of information, but also on greater plasticity in the management of social roles, so as to protect “ the person against his own public existence “. In other words, to save the freedom of “ glass citizen », Sofsky stretches the Goffmanian schema of the “ self-presentation » and substitutes “ walls ” which until now protected the private sphere “ personal facade » that individuals show to others – with the risk, perhaps, of making social life a carnival where pretense and disguise reign.