What persists into postmodern conditions is an abiding infrastructural dependence on communication and information technologies. They are undoubtedly… - David Lyon

Comint represents the effort to gain access to, intercept and process every important modern form of communication, in every significant sphere, and in many countries.

But the term surveillance society does have connotations that at least hint at possible negative consequences, in ways that unambiguously optimistic talk of "information societies" and "knowledge-based economies" does not. My point is rather that such societies are in part constituted by a surveillance dimension.

Surveillance today is a means of sorting and classifying populations and not just of invading personal space or violating the privacy of individuals. In postmodernizing contexts surveillance is an increasingly powerful means of reinforcing social divisions, as the superpanoptic sort relentlessly screens, monitors and classifies to determine eligibility and access, to include and to exclude.