Criminological research on surveillance is relatively scarce. This is even more striking because criminology is often grounded in empirical research in relation to tackling crime and disorder. Moreover, the private sector has made all sorts of surveillance services accessible to the public at large. These services generate data which routinely provide input to build user profiles, are resold to other tech companies and can be requested by the authorities to investigate crimes. In surveillance studies, these developments have led to discussions about theoretical and normative frameworks how (digital) surveillance relates to security issues. These discussions center less on ‘what works’, but more on ‘what assumptions underlie the data’, ‘what are the effects and consequences’, or even ‘where does it stop’. In order to provide an impetus for more attention to surveillance as a criminological topic, this article presents an overview of the history of surveillance studies and provides some perspectives for criminological research, ranging from a ‘digital ethics’ to the ‘surveillance experiences’ of the people who watch and are being watched.

Based on a literature review and reflections on twenty qualitative interviews with (undocumented) women migrants active in paid domestic work in the platform economy in London, the United Kingdom, this contribution explores (digital) surveillance and worker control as work-based harms in the platform economy. It finds that paid domestic work, due to its siting in the private household and its prioritizing of personal relationships and trust, is less suited for the impersonal logic of algorithms and surveillance that generally characterizes working relations in the platform economy. At the same time, inequalities that traditionally structure employment relations in the sector of paid domestic work are still reproduced by platforms despite their potential to contribute to more job mobility and better access to work and employment.

This article describes the first applications of photography as a practice and technique for police surveillance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores how, through the growing use of photography in law enforcement, the criminal subject was increasingly followed, registered, classified and studied. The article reveals that photographic representations and surveillance shifted from the criminal body (mug shots) to abstract data (fingerprints). However, through describing the history of surveillance, the paper shows that also important patterns of continuity with contemporary practices of (digital) surveillance exist, in particular regarding the cultural motivations underpinning its trajectory and use of technologies.

The pandemic has shown how many areas of life can still be digitized, from work, school, and social relations to institutional and care contexts. Using the utopian techno-visions of the metaverse and the critical concept of data colonialism, this essay argues that such ongoing digitization and datafication poses a threat to autonomy, a central value in democratic societies. It proposes a multi-faceted notion of autonomy, which goes beyond rational choice or privacy, to understand the ramifications of the economic, epistemological, and ontological monopolies that technological platforms strive for.

Police surveillance is undergoing fundamental changes due to (use of) digital technology. It becomes disconnected from the eyes and brains of policemen. As a result, digital police surveillance has a larger scale, is more continuous and has more depth compared to traditional (human) police surveillance. These changes can – through several mechanisms – contribute to the effectiveness of policing. At the same time, digital police surveillance poses the risk of undermining the values the police is pledged to protect.

Quite a few researchers are convinced that online consent is invalid or meaningless. They reason as follows: knowledge is an insufficient but necessary condition for consent, and since such knowledge is absent or hardly there in an online context, the conclusion is that (uninformed) online consent is invalid or meaningless. The author’s point is this: reliance on the right not to know undermines the argument against uninformed online consent. That argument does not lead to the conclusion that online consent is invalid. Thus, a choice preceded by the exercise of the right not to know need not be a problem. In other words, uninformed online consent does not deserve the bad reputation it has.

Based on three academic books, it is analysed how artificial intelligence (AI) can radically change the manner how public domains are organised, and services are provided. Hereby, there is special attention to how AI is used for surveillance by law enforcement agencies, amplifying and transforming police functions. Based on this analysis, six principles for responsible automatization are provided. These principles can serve as a starting point for developing regulation and policy that ensure that AI is administered in such a way that it strengthens the position, knowledge and skills of people, and that this is secured through continuous democratic debates.