Researchers use game theory to show link between government surveillance and corruption
By Madeleine Pauker
Researchers at UC Berkeley’s School of Information used game theory to demonstrate that governments tend to abuse existing surveillance systems to stay in power in a new study published last month.
The model displays how different levels of surveillance affect the actions of a government, as well as citizen welfare and popularity of the government. By imparting each agent in the model with a specific set of goals and incentives, researchers determined that once a surveillance system exists, a government will always have incentives to abuse it to achieve its objective of staying in power....
Although abuse of power is a different concept from surveillance, the two are directly related in that surveillance and surveillance technology make abuses of power more effective, said visiting assistant professor Paul Laskowski, a co-author of the study....