Co-Producing Surveillance: Technology, Law, and State–Society Relations in Asia

Amid the global intensification of surveillance through digital and biometric technologies, this review conceptualizes surveillance as the coproduction of law, technology, and state–society relations. Examining cases from China, India, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, it develops a spectrum of techno-legal coproduction shaped by the degree of alignment or contestation between law and technology. At one end, authoritarian synergy integrates legal and technological systems to consolidate control; at the other, rights-bounded contestation in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan constrains surveillance through legal safeguards, judicial oversight, and civic activism. India and Singapore occupy hybrid middle positions. Across these contexts, surveillance emerges through dynamic interactions among state, corporate, and civic actors. Future research should extend this comparative framework to additional Asian contexts and explore the transnational dimensions of surveillance, including the diffusion and hybridization of legal norms, the circulation of technologies and governance models, and the emergence of transnational networks of resistance and accountability.