EC grants 2.6 million euros for development of this Security Policies programme project
Do video-surveillance cameras in the street undermine our liberties or provide greater security? What effects do all the images taken in public spaces and distributed via social networks have? These are some of the questions that are to be examined and answered by the Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies (IRISS) project developed by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC).
IRISS is to spend three years studying the democratic response to the spread of surveillance technologies. This project is to be coordinated by the UOC’s Security Policies programme. The UOC, together with a consortium of European research centres and universities, has received 2.6 million euros in funding from the EC to carry out the project.
Social perception of surveillance
Gemma Galdon, Director of the Security Policies programme and the project’s lead researcher, stressed that “surveillance has, obviously, become a constant presence in our lives, as can be seen in the case of video-surveillance, but also in less obvious examples, such as mobile telephones, GPS, customer loyalty cards or the internet […] The aim of the project is to examine how we view this ‘invasion’ of our privacy and how we react, and to what degree we see as potentially dangerous and if we oppose it.” She highlighted that “specifically in the case of southern and eastern Europe, we will be looking to see if there are different mechanisms for dealing with surveillance by the state or private companies”.
The project’s researchers are to study citizens’ responses to the awareness of being observed and the knowledge that their personal details are being processed constantly. The project is to focus on the impact of technologies on people’s day-to-day lives, including the social perception of the measures introduced over recent years to combat crime and terrorism. By studying attitudes to surveillance technologies, IRISS will assess the impact they have on civil liberties, trust of institutions, and the open and democratic nature of European societies.
At the end of the project, IRISS is to produce a series of recommendations on how to increase democratic qualities in society.
Funding from the EC’s 7th Framework Programme
IRISS is a project funded by the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme. The UOC’s Security Policies programme has also been shortlisted for three other of the programme’s calls for projects worth in excess of 20 million euros. The results will be made known in the summer.
Information of interest
UOC Security Policies programme
To contact the researcher: ggaldon@uoc.edu
Further information
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