Persuasive Surveillance

When information is posted online for example, individuals are now aware that CSIS has full control over that information—and can get a warrant essentially whenever they want. This can lead individuals self-governing what they say, what they post—and in a way—the way they think. Based on Michel Foucault’s research in his article Discipline and Punish, CSIS’s mode of surveillance is much like the notion of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. The panopticon is an idea for a prison where there is a guard tower in the centre of a circular room. Around the perimeter of the prison is where the cells are.

What does every society that has ever existed hold in common? The answer: surveillance, was, or is, a part of it. Since the first recorded civilizations, different methods have been used to influence ways of thoughts and actions, as well as to simply keep track of individuals and exert power over them. As time has progressed, so has the amount of surveillance conducted on individuals, and with it, a striking relationship corresponding to the amount of surveillance, and location on the social structure hierarchy taking place; the higher one’s location is on this structure, the less surveillance they will experience. Those who are more privileged in society, such as white, cis-gendered males like myself, experience a significant lesser amount

The Panopticon is a building which has an annual part in the periphery and a tower in the centre. Next to omitting little details its most important feature is the ability to see into every cells without being visible. “The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately.” (Calhoun et al., 2007: 209) The consciousness of being watched make people put on their best behaviour, their best way of acting thus the inmates do not commit any further crimes as it usually occurs that could happen without being watched.

Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, has brought to attention insights that help clarify how power and discipline work together to create surveillance for a large group. Foucault passed away before the birth of the internet, but has provided society with knowledge on how surveillance is applicable to the online world. In the essay Panopticism, Foucault expands on Jeremy Bentham’s theory of the panopticon. Proposed by Bentham in the mid-19th century, the panopticon is a prison which was used to observe inmates constantly (Torres, 2017). The prison has a tower in the middle, where each inmate can be seen from the tower by a guard (Foucault, 1975, 200). Therefore, the prisoners always think they are being watched as they cannot see who is in the tower, or if there even is anyone in the tower watching. Foucault describes this in his essay as being “the major effects of

     The Panopticon, a prison described by Foucault, “is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing” (321, Foucault). This literally means that in the formation of the panopticon those who are being seen can not see one another and the one who sees everything can never be seen. That is the most important tool of the panopticon. Foucault makes this assumption about today’s society by saying that we are always being watched whether we know it or not. One always keeps an eye over their shoulder as a

Did you know that 58% of employers have fired workers for Internet and email misuse? And 48% justify employee video monitoring as an effort to “counter theft and violence?” According to the “2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey” of which 304 U.S. companies participated in, computer-monitoring results have led to the highest cause of employee termination. These companies used several tactics to eavesdrop on employees while claiming to be managing productivity or for security purposes. Some argue that surveillance is absolutely necessary to help protect and grow a business; others argue that employee and customer rights come first. However, companies that use such tactics often violate the privacy of individuals, exploit their private information and even punish those that do not conform to their standards.

Foucault once stated, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests” (301). By this, he means that our society is full of constant supervision that is not easily seen nor displayed. In his essay, Panopticism, Foucault goes into detail about the different disciplinary societies and how surveillance has become a big part of our lives today. He explains how the disciplinary mechanisms have dramatically changed in comparison to the middle ages. Foucault analyzes in particular the Panopticon, which was a blueprint of a disciplinary institution. The idea of this institution was for inmates to be seen but not to see. As Foucault put it, “he is the object of information, never a subject in

The author of the essay “Panopticism”, Michel Foucault gives his opinion on power and discipline in Panopticism. He describes Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon”, a tower in the centre of a room which has vision to every cell, generalized for prisoners. In simple words, it functioned in maintaining discipline throughout the jail. It’s most distinctive feature was that; prisoners could be seen without ever seeing. Prisoners would never really know when they are watched and when not. They are always under the impression that someone is keeping an eye on them continuously and if anything goes wrong, or they make mistake, they would be punished severely. Since, a prisoner would never know when he/she is watched, they have to be at their best. In a

Almost everything someone does in today’s society is under surveillance. It does not matter if you are surfing the web, going to the store, or even driving a car; it is almost always under surveillance. While Michel Foucault does not specifically talk about modern surveillance technology in Discipline & Punish (1977), much of the primitive technology that he does talk about is directly related with today’s surveillance technology. Michel Foucault believes that societal surveillance began to take effect during the 1600’s to control the masses. Many modern surveillance technologies reflect Foucault’s ideas helping to categorize, differentiate, hierarchize, and exclude people from the masses.

Historically, the concept of hierarchal observation uses architecture to attain a single ‘gaze’ over an entire body of people. Foucault illustrates that “the perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly” (Rabinow, 1984). Therefore, these specific types of architecture were being developed in hospitals, asylums, schools and most notably, prisons. Thus, Foucault focused on Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, developed in the late 1970’s, to illustrate how hierarchal observation affects the individual. The emergence of panopticon like architecture allowed for power to be effective, and economic – one guard can watch many inmates. Accordingly, the use of the panopticon in prisons allows for a hierarchal observation because whether or not someone is watching, prisoners are made to believe someone of higher power such as a guard or warden are watching. Foucault illustrated that a problem with creating panopticon like architecture is that, “they are no longer built simply to be seen or to observe, but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control of individuals”

According to Foucault, power does not belong to the individual, but to the system, to the institution. In his essay on Discipline and Punish, Foucault presents his idea of the panopticon mechanism, a mechanism in which visibility is a trap. With little importance over the actual individual in the role of the observer or of the observed, the object of the system is total power over the observed. Due to the unique shape of the panopticon, there are no corners and thus no blind spots for the observed to hide in. The private space is replaced by the public one. Furthermore, as final evidence of total control, the observed never knows for sure if they are being watched or not, as they can’t see the observer (Foucault 200-205). Foucault further argues that this system is followed by any government institution, placing the society under permanent observation. Individuals might try to evade the system, but achieving liberation and freedom is not something that anyone could do. Dostoevsky’s famous novel, Crime and

A Panopticon is a cylindrical prison where all prisoners’ cells face a central watchtower with the intention of instilling the idea of constant surveillance in prisoners. Panopticism stems from the same model which refers to the idea of constant surveillance in any setting especially in today’s world of technological pervasiveness. The panopticon represents the double edged sword that is present to society as authorities want to exert more control on the individuals. Between giving up privacy for safety and private lives that endanger all, the need for regulation of behavior gets stuck in the middle of it all. The movie Citizen Four (Poitras, 2014) highlights that any shred of privacy that we thought we had has been lost in the “shadowy labyrinths

In Michael Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”, the late eighteen century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's model of Panopticon was illustrated as a metaphor for the contemporary technologies of mass surveillance.

One of my former teachers, Michael Gedville, “it’s not what you do when people are watching, but what you do when others aren’t watching.” This quote reminds me about Michel Foucault, who was a French social theorist. He was a physiologist that had a different perspective than the original physiologist. Foucault would go astray from the normal path of thinking and try new ideas. One example is Foucault’s perspective on societal surveillance. This emerged in the West after about 1600 as a means of reforming malefactors and shaping the actions of all members of society. Foucault believed surveillance emerged as a means to change human behavior, and many contemporary surveillance technologies reflect this larger social function of ensuring that the rules of proper conduct and behavior are internalized by members of society.

Surveillance was used by the sovereign as a form of power “that it was more efficient and profitable in terms of the economy of power to place people under surveillance than to subject them to some exemplary penalty” (Foucault, 1977, p. 38). For Foucault individuals had more freedom in the past even though people were tortured in comparison to today, he explains to us that in the past people knew that if they committed a serious crime torture would ensue. In the prison system, prisoners are being watched at all times, everything is regulated and documentations are filled out on regular and irregular behaviour. In order to watch inmates at all times, Bentham’s architectural structure called the panoptican was used in prisons. This enabled officers to watch inmates without them knowing. All cells could not be watched at the same time but inmates did not know if they were bring observed or not so they behaved as if they were being observed. Prisoners are confined in their cells with no engagement with other inmates. Watchmen can see in but prisoners cannot see out. They are in total confinement. (Spierenburg,