In depth, breadth, and even-handedness, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, Volume 1 of a Report to the Select Committee on the Constitution of the House of Lords (hereafter the Report) is an impressive document. There is, however, an absence at its core that I want to address. Surveillance technologies such as CCTV cameras, RFID tags, the National DNA Database and corporate databases can be properly assessed only if the countervailing right of privacy is strongly articulated and broadly understood.

The belief that God has eyes and God is the “Eye” can be traced back to the time before ancient Greece and Rome.

Image: Alphonse Bertillon. Fiche anthropométrique recto-verso. 1893. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Paul B. Preciado, as curator of Taiwanese Pavilion at Venice Biennale, 2019, is a philosopher, a scholar of sexual politics, an activist and a curator.

Paul B. Preciado©Catherine Opie, courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum