An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Simeon Xu (IASH-CTPI Duncan Forrester Fellow, 2024)
Watching in Justice: Cultivating Justice in Surveillance Society
With the rapid progress of AI technology, digital surveillance has become pervasive in human life. Humans are datafied, and our social activities and behaviors are turned into data points that can be collected, surveilled, and analyzed. In this way, dataveillance becomes possible as all data concerning our lives are likely stored somewhere and can be associated with other information related to us and those we know. Coupled with the fast processing of AI systems, dataveillance can help the surveiller obtain a panorama of the privacy of the surveillee and people connected with them. Privacy is susceptible to erosion in a surveillance society.
The issue concerning privacy reflects the injustice between the surveiller and the surveillee. I draw on Duncan Forrester’s theological idea of justice to develop this interdisciplinary research. Forrester argues that justice is ‘a quality of relationship, it has to do with the links of obligation, responsibility, and care that bind people together in society.’ Such justice can be modeled on God’s justice. Furthermore, Forrester conjoins injustice and poverty, arguing that poverty brings to light our unjust relationship with our neighbours.
Relying on Forrester’s relational account of justice, I seek to explore the way in which relational justice can be used to foster obligation, responsibility, and care within surveillance systems. In this vein, relational justice is mediated through surveillance technology, especially AI systems, into human technomoral life.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81857401179
Passcode: 6aSe7GF7