The Digital Panopticon: Foucault and Internet Privacy Essay example

In today’s world, Privacy and Security comes hand in hand with internet. Technology allows us free speech and freedom of information over the internet, by imposing strict laws and policies regulating the privacy and security of our information. According to Richard Clarke, free expression over the internet and its privacy are two sides of the same coin (Privacy and security(n.d.)). Writing blogs, uploading posts, comments or pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, networking or sharing links on Linkedin are all considered as our free expression and its security is our right. Individual right to

helps the subject mold their image in the public eye. I will be analyzing how Foucault and

The Panopticon was designed to be a circular building with a tower in the very center. The tower had big windows in order for the guard to be able to see everything that the inmates were doing. The cells were similar to a dungeon. They were very small and isolated. There was no communication between each other nor could the inmates see or communicate with the guard. As Foucault asserted,” Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and

At one end of the hall was a small opening through which we could videotape and record the events that occurred. On the side of the corridor opposite the cells was a small closet which became "The Hole," or solitary confinement. It was dark and very confining, about two feet wide and two feet deep, but tall enough that a "bad prisoner" could stand up. An intercom system allowed us to secretly bug the cells to monitor what the prisoners discussed, and also to make public announcements to the prisoners.

The location utilized in this short story is an ideal prison location. It is considered to be a secluded area with nobody but a mansion at a particular landscape. “It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, three miles from the village” (Charlotte Perkins Gilman). The description of the place by the narrator shows an exact image of what the critic calls “Foucauldian prison.” “The narrator is confined to a nursery at the top of the house that is similar to a cell in Panopticon.” “In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions—to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide—it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap” (Michel Foucault, 1979). The prison in which the narrator is held is unlike every other prison that is known in the outside world. Rather than iron gates being used as doors to confine all inmates to a particular cell, wallpaper is used as bars instead. The critic believes that the light from the wallpaper was so bright. This is a feature not seen in an everyday prison.

Government surveillance in the past was not a big threat due to the limitations on technology; however, in the current day, it has become an immense power for the government. Taylor, author of a book on Electronic Surveillance supports, "A generation ago, when records were tucked away on paper in manila folders, there was some assurance that such information wouldn 't be spread everywhere. Now, however, our life stories are available at the push of a button" (Taylor 111). With more and more Americans logging into social media cites and using text-messaging devices, the more providers of metadata the government has. In her journal “The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit”, Anita L. Allen, an expert on privacy law, writes, “Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication…there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping” (Allen 1). Being in the middle of the Digital Age, we have to be much more careful of the kinds of information we put in our digital devices.

This prison couldn’t be like any other. Alcatraz needed to condense the prisoners from the society .So Cummings decided to build the prison on a rocky island miles away from land. The surrounding water was frigid year round and had strong currents. But thats not all Alcatraz had major security. With included 3 guards for every prisoner,machine guns,tear gas, and microphones placed everywhere for guards to overhear any conversation.It also included tough disipline so that every time a prisoner would talk they would be thrown in a dark concreate room for days apon days. The guards family also lived on the island for maximum security

The Tower security discoveries include several points of entry and no positive identifications of guards. The Tower was also used for storage and medication distribution to the inmates. Using the Tower for medication distribution gave the inmates access to study the layout and functions of the Tower. The tower gave poor observation of the inmate’s behavior and movements from the housing area to the kitchen area. The Tower gave the guards inadequate ability to gain access to weapons needed to defend themselves against the inmates.

• that a person can learn to become aware of the interaction of cognition, emotion, and behavior; and that altering the ones that may be more directly under our control or influence – cognition and behavior – will impact the person’s responses on all levels.

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

     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

* Refers to the private thoughts, emotions, feelings, and motives that other people can not directly observe.

Originally derived from the measures to control “abnormal beings” against the spreading of a plague, the Panopticon is an architecture designed to induce power with a permanent sense of visibility. With a tower in the center, surrounded by cells, the prisoners can be monitored and watched at any given time from the central tower. The goal of this architectural plan was to strip away any privacy and therefore create fear induced self-regulation amongst the prisoners, with an unverifiable gaze - The prisoners can never

The digital age provides individuals with numerous ways of innovative opportunities like recording data in an effective manner, electronic banking, online shopping, by violating privacy. Despite what might be expected, the national and global security framework needs components to check programmers and outsider interceptors, who can access delicate data and information, placed in various divisions of the financial framework. These outsider interceptors can then break-in remotely to harm or get access to passwords and usernames.

One major link includes the fight between an oppressed group and their persecutors. Whether it’s the proletariat and the bourgeois in “The Communist Manifesto,” or the inequality of genders in “The Second Sex,” or the flight of the African Americans in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In all of these texts we are shown how easy it is for one group to abuse their power and create unfair rules and regulations only imposed on the more inferior members of society. Each group of oppressor thrives off of alienating, and subjugating their inferiors.