ID Scanning, The Media and the Politics of Urban Surveillance in an Australian Regional City

Abstract

Computerised ID scanning technologies have permeated many urban night-time economies in Australia, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. This paper documents how one media organisation’s overt and tacit approval of ID scanners helped to normalise this form of surveillance as a precondition of entry into ten licensed venues in the Australian city of Geelong. After outlining how processes of governance “from above” and “from below” interweave to generate distinct political and media reactions to the prevention of localised crime problems, a chronological reconstruction of media reports over a three-and-a half year period demonstrates how ID scanning became the centrepiece of a holistic reform strategy to combat alcohol-related violence in the Geelong nightclub precinct. Several discursive techniques helped to normalise this “technological fix”, while suppressing critical discussion of viable concerns over information privacy, data security and system networking. These included pairing reports of an initial “signal crime” with examples of “virtual victimhood” to depict a crisis of violence to validate a radical surveillance-based response and publishing anecdotal statements from key “primary definers” highlighting the success of this initiative in targeting a wider population of antisocial “others”. The implications of these reporting practices are discussed in light of the media’s central role in reforming the Geelong night-time economy and broader trends associated with using novel surveillance technologies to combat urban crime problems at the expense of alternative measures that protect individual liberty.