Risky or at risk? Young people, surveillance and security

Most of us experience some form of surveillance in our daily life, whether it is the CCTV camera in the shop where we buy our morning paper, the identify card we use to enter the workplace, or the software that monitors our PC to protect it from fraud. But not all forms of monitoring should be accepted uncritically. As Lyon (2001:4) suggests, there is more than one side to surveillance as it has the 'capacity to reinforce social and economic divisions, to channel choices and to direct desires, and even at its sharp end to constrain and control'. It is these different faces of surveillance that this article will discuss with a particular focus on the experiences of young people