Channels, Fall 2018

Page 138 Warder • Eyes on the Money geographic centrality in Asia. This motivation, coupled with the rising necessity for adaptation and advancement by national governments in order to maintain traditional standards of international and domestic control, served to facilitate the rise of the modern-day surveillance state. Consider the following table: Table: Comparing Powers and Policy USA PRC GDP, World Ranking $18.6 trillion, 1st $11.2 trillion, 2nd Government Orientation and FreedomLimited Democracy (citizens influence national policy) Communist Authoritarian (citizens have little influence over national policy) Primary CCTV Proliferation Catalyst Terrorism threat CPC policy of domestic security and control Freedom House Index (2018) 86th percentile14th percentile Level of Surveillance State Development Limited Diffusion Towards Ubiquity Approximate # of CCTV Cameras in Use 30 million 170 million Approximate ratio of citizens/camera 12 8 Market Predictions for CCTV Technology GrowthGrowth The findings here summarize a number of important points. First, the USA and the PRC are the two largest economies in the world and therefore likely to continue to utilize CCTV networks as a part of the domestic securitization process. Second, even though the USA operates a relatively democratic system and the PRC remains highly authoritarian, as is demonstrated by Freedom House rankings and government system delineation, both states have a well-developed surveillance state, indicating that the surveillance state is in fact driven by the onset of the modern international system. These findings may, however, show that differing governmental systems could have an effect upon the rate of surveillance state development. The USA is noticeably behind the PRC in regard to total numbers of CCTV cameras being employed. This may be due to the fact that the Golden Shield project and related state security initiatives in the PRC were and are being carried out at the behest of the CPC government as per its own policy, and thereby accelerates according to the designs of CPC officials, whereas the domestic securitization process in the USA, being a government more subject to its constituent citizens, required a large-scale catastrophic event (in this case, the World Trade Center attacks) to galvanize policymakers and rally constituents behind the idea of increasing the scope of government surveillance. Thus, while both states are increasing government surveillance presence, the USA remains at the level of “institutional diffusion,” while the PRC has advanced into the “towards ubiquity” stage of comprehensive surveillance (see McCahill, Norris and Wood). A final aspect of state-run CCTV network proliferation is the danger that expansive government surveillance can actually be harmful to the state institution itself. As stated earlier, some scholars argue that the surveillance state in the USA runs the danger of eventually undermining the fundamentals of the civil government in relation to the idea that the constituent citizens will no