
Targeted
Corporations and the Police Surveillance Economy
Kelly Gates(Author)
New York University Press
Published on 19. August 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
216 pages
978-1-4798-2921-7 (ISBN)
Description
How video transformed policing and security
Video cameras are everywhere: attached to buildings, drones, and dashboards; embedded in smartphones, laptops, and doorbells; worn on police uniforms and sunglasses. In Targeted, Kelly Gates argues that the resulting avalanche of video has transformed the landscape of policing and security in the twenty-first century. Video production, analysis, and archival management are now central to the ways police power is exercised, criminal law enforced, and spaces of human habitation securitized.
Gates examines the primacy of video in four key areas of policing and security: the field of digital multimedia forensics, private video surveillance infrastructure development, police body-worn camera systems, and video analytics for automated surveillance (Video AI). Case studies of two companies illustrate the role of corporations in these far-reaching media-technological changes. Target Corporation has integrated its retail security operations with law enforcement, expanding its surveillance beyond its stores and parking lots and into the criminal legal system. Axon Enterprise is leveraging the growing volume of police body-cam video to build a large-scale proprietary platform for policing.
Targeted reveals the role of video infrastructure development in the increasingly entangled relationship between the modern police and the modern corporation, in the long wake and ruins of neoliberalism.
Video cameras are everywhere: attached to buildings, drones, and dashboards; embedded in smartphones, laptops, and doorbells; worn on police uniforms and sunglasses. In Targeted, Kelly Gates argues that the resulting avalanche of video has transformed the landscape of policing and security in the twenty-first century. Video production, analysis, and archival management are now central to the ways police power is exercised, criminal law enforced, and spaces of human habitation securitized.
Gates examines the primacy of video in four key areas of policing and security: the field of digital multimedia forensics, private video surveillance infrastructure development, police body-worn camera systems, and video analytics for automated surveillance (Video AI). Case studies of two companies illustrate the role of corporations in these far-reaching media-technological changes. Target Corporation has integrated its retail security operations with law enforcement, expanding its surveillance beyond its stores and parking lots and into the criminal legal system. Axon Enterprise is leveraging the growing volume of police body-cam video to build a large-scale proprietary platform for policing.
Targeted reveals the role of video infrastructure development in the increasingly entangled relationship between the modern police and the modern corporation, in the long wake and ruins of neoliberalism.
Reviews / Votes
"In this provocative, lucidly-written book, Kelly Gates uncovers the systems that sort and analyze the 'avalanches of video' captured by surveillance and policing cameras. Tackling topics like video forensics, policy body-cams, and video AI, Targeted does us all a huge service by detailing the media logistics and privatization of policing that surface around every corner. A must-read in these tumultuous times." - Lisa Parks, University of California at Santa Barbara"A deeply researched expose of the video surveillance industry. Kelly Gates shows how visibility is much more than a trap: it is a system of control that weaves together public and private institutions in an increasingly automated surveillance society. Targeted is a tour de force that continues Gates's pioneering work on visual surveillance. It is an invaluable contribution to literature on surveillance and an essential road map for navigating the ongoing privatization and commercialization of the security state." - Mark Andrejevic, Monash University
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
12 b/w images
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 151 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
338 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4798-2921-7 (9781479829217)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
08/2025
NYU Press
€20.49
Available for download
Person
Kelly Gates is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance, as well as the editor of International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Vol. 6: Media Studies Futures and The New Media of Surveillance. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals, including Surveillance & Society, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and Social Semiotics.