Abstract
The terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 led to increased government and public attention on surveillance and information-sharing within emergency preparedness agencies. Since 2001, emergency services across Canada and the US have been taking active steps to centralize their services through the implementation of advanced information technologies (IT).
After conducting discourse analysis on interviews with IT designers and corporate texts (company websites, newsletters and training manuals) Sanders argues that emergency information technologies are framed in two interrelated and overlapping ways: first as technologies of knowledge management; and second, as tools (searchable databases) of risk management. From this ethnographic inquiry a number of theoretical questions surrounding the impact of policing IT, surveillance and the reconstruction of crime, deviant identities and deviant spaces are addressed.
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The Surveillance Studies Centre
c/o David Murakami Wood
Department of Criminology
University of Ottawa
Canada