Can you see your data shadow? A University of Stirling expert is to turn the tables and put surveillance under scrutiny.

Can you see your data shadow? A University of Stirling expert is to turn the tables and put surveillance under scrutiny.

Dr William Webster of the Stirling Management School has secured over half a million Euros of funding from the European Science Foundation to study the impact of surveillance on individuals and society over the next four years.

The Living in Surveillance Societies programme sees Webster head up a new Europe-wide network of academics. More than 90 researchers from 15 countries have signed up to the network, which Dr Webster will chair.

He said: "The programme is about facilitating a better understanding of what it is like to live in a society where technologically mediated surveillance is so prevalent - both for the surveyor and the surveyed. It will look at our experiences of the impact of surveillance on people, businesses, technology and governance."

Webster says surveillance is now taking place on an unprecedented scale, with new technology allowing vast amounts of personal data to be collected, analysed, processed and stored.

The reasons for it range from national security to e-government and market research. "Today, surveillance is all around us, it is ubiquitous, pervasive and normalised," he said. "This surveillance is also subtle and discreet, with most people unaware they cast a data shadow as they go about their daily lives, and relatively little is known about the impacts of widespread surveillance on individuals and society."

Concerns raised by such technologies include its impact on privacy, questions of accountability and transparency, and the effect on social trust, Webster says. He added that surveillance was having unknown impacts on human behaviour and what we consider public space, while risks due to information sharing, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness and the possibility of errors with the technology have not been fully studied.

Webster said the network wasn't a research project but would enable academics to raise awareness of surveillance in society and better understand the consequences. The outcomes would help inform surveillance policy and practice.