Once upon a time an ethicist had a brilliant idea for a prison. Today we all live in it.
Starting in 1785, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham spent decades (and much of his own fortune) advocating for the construction of a facility he called the Panopticon—the “all-seeing place.” Inside its walls, convicted prisoners would be exposed to perpetual view from a central tower by an unseen jailer, who could supervise their behavior, health and menial labor. Bentham insisted that the Panopticon would be safer and more affordable than other prisons—but not because the prisoners were always being watched. Rather the true genius of the idea lay in what made it, in his words, “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.” Because the prisoners would not be able to see whether a guard was in the Panopticon’s tower, it could often be unmanned and they would never know. Out of fear and uncertainty, the prisoners would in effect stand watch over themselves.
The British government never approved final construction of a Panopticon, despite Bentham’s fervent lobbying (at one point he promised to serve as the guard at no wages). Instead, ironically, over recent decades London itself has become one of the most intensively monitored metropolises in the world, with more than 10,000 public security cameras and a far greater number of private ones installed by landlords, shopkeepers and homeowners.
Surveillance is everywhere. A 1998 survey counted almost 2,400 public and private cameras in Manhattan, and that number has surely skyrocketed since then as the cost of video has fallen. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to cities in grants for cameras to fight terrorism. The available evidence that all this monitoring actually improves security, at least against street crime, is at best thin, however.
Video surveillance is only the tip of the iceberg. As the articles in this special issue describe, the rise of assorted technologies has multiplied manyfold the opportunities for us to share data about ourselves—or for others to spy on us.
In his book The Transparent Society, David Brin argues that the modern conception of privacy is historically transient and made obsolete by new technology; rather than trying futilely to keep secrets, he thinks we should concentrate on preventing abuses of them by insisting that everyone, including governments, be an equally open book. How well that strategy can work in practice is debatable. But there is no question that society is, however unwarily, embracing much of the new openness. Millions now post their lives on Facebook and MySpace for all to see. Companies successfully entreat customers to divulge personal information in return for services. In 1948 George Orwell portrayed an all-knowing Big Brother as a totalitarian nightmare. Sixty years later Big Brother is reality TV entertainment.
Those developments are not altogether bad. What should concern us most is not whether the changing state of privacy is making us more or less safe or happy. It is whether, as Bentham predicted, it subjects us to a new “power of mind over mind.” Does uncertainty about whether someone is observing us, exploiting our secrets or even stealing our identity cause us to preemptively sacrifice our freedom to be and act as we would wish? When privacy disappears, do we first respond by hiding from ourselves?
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6 Comments
Add CommentThe security issue vs privacy is most certainly a relative thing. Anyone that lived in a small, primarily rural, community before everyone had an easy way to get out of the community (like a car) knows how little privacy there was. Everyone was watching everyone else, and through the gossip mill, anyone who wanted to know what someone else had been up to had no problem getting the information. And yet, most considered those communities much more secure than the "cities". What was the result? A way of life many long for today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think a core issue is being missed. All of this voluntary stuff with Facebook and MySpace is just that--voluntary--Big Brother is not. I check my email several times a day. My father barely checks his once a month. It's a mistake, I think, to compare a voluntary openness to forced surveillance. Any time I want, I can shut down my blog, silence my Twitterstream, close my Facebook and delete everything in my MySpace and my life will go on. George Orwell's Big Brother gave his subjects no such freedom. I do think it's dangerous for us to not be aware that government and (more creepily) corporations are watching us, but again, we can opt out at any time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust my 2 yen, of course.
Is the often quoted saying 'If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to be concerned about' valid when other less scrupulous people or corporations abuse ones openess or transparency? The core concern should be about the dangers of allowing access to personal information on a grand scale becoming available to the political elite thus facilitating a lurch to totalitarianism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree, however in small communities the gossip or 'scandal' issues were 9 day wonders and not archived for automatic retrieval or other usage by faceless people many miles away to be used for a wide range of purposes not all benign.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA disclaimer in one of the websites points out that the user of the internet runs an inherent risk of being tracked. No message or information via the internet is private. In short, there is no privacy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith the mushrooming of tiny and ultra-efficient surveillance gadgets all over the world (particularly in the big cities), eavesdropping and bugging have become incredibly rampant if not near insanity. There is no such thing as privacy.
George Orwell would never believe that terrorism could have helped to expedite the Big Brother mentality so soon. In the eyes of national intelligence, no body can keep any secret. Everyone would turn into a living zombie with an identification number covertly tagged. Where is privacy? (Tan Boon Tee)
One snage wit hsimply counting numbers of viceo surveillance characters is the assumption that they're all use dby 'government' for 'security' purposes. Many are used for traffic control, many are installed by organisations for monitoring doors and carparks. One mainline railway station I regularly use in London is bristling with video cameras - but for crowd control (it is a very busy station at rush hour) rather than anti-terrorism. So it's a lot more complicated than just saying more remote video=better security, or alternatively that remote video is ineffective. You have to dig deeper and look at what they're being used for and by whom.
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