Technopolicing, surveillance, and citizen oversight: A neorepublican theory of liberty and information control

• Neorepublican political theory is applied to questions of government surveillance.
• Information control can equal power and has implications for individual freedom.
• Government access to personal information is dominating and limits freedom.
• Citizens should maintain the right to access government information.
• National security interests can be balanced with mandatory sunlight provisions.

In modern society, we see the struggle to balance the proper functioning of government with the interests and rights of the people to access government information playing out all around us. This paper explores the relationship between liberty and security implicated by government surveillance and citizen-initiated efforts to cast the gaze back at the government (so-called “reciprocal surveillance”). In particular, this paper explores how a neorepublican conception of political liberty, defined as the absence of the possibility of domination, can inform future information policy research in this area. The paper concludes that, to be fully non-dominating, government must respect and provide effective institutional and legal mechanisms for their citizenry to effectuate self-government and command noninterference. Establishing liberal access rights to information about government conduct and mechanisms that ensure that citizens can effectively command noninterference are justified on the grounds that they reduce the possibility of arbitrary, and actual, interference with the right of the people govern themselves.