the watchmen

Sometime around the turn of the nineteenth century, a philosopher named Jeremy Bentham conceived a revolutionary prison design. The idea would be expensive to build, but relatively inexpensive to operate. Called the "Panopticon" the design called for a circular building where each cell was windowed at both ends and observable from a central tower where the observers could not be seen. The idea was that the prisoners, knowing that at all times they were observable, but never knowing exactly when they were being observed, would be compelled to act on their best behavior at all times (the observation tower being shuttered and baffled to hide the guards from view). In theory, the guard tower could actually be empty, at least some of the time, but prisoners (or, if applied to a business, employees) could never be sure that it was, or wasnt.

Have you ever not looked at a web-site at work, because you suspected the company monitored web traffic? Have you ever not run a red light because you thought you saw a camera at the intersection? Have you ever avoided certain words that you thought might be interpreted by watchers at Homeland Security as "suspect", possibly bringing you attention you would rather avoid? Have you ever toned down a piece of anti-administration rhetoric because you figured the NSA was looking for kooks like yourself? (Wave "hello" to the boys!) Well, congratulations! You've just experienced the Panopticon.

Now, really, in theory, the Panopticon isnt really so bad. In a way, it's not much different than what life must have been like in almost every small community on the planet not 200 years ago, or so. No one had much privacy, once upon a time. That is still the basis of a lot of small-town stories set in modern times. When people think they are being watched, only the most sociopathic will not alter their behavior from what they might do when they are assured of privacy. Is this conformity to social standards a bad thing? Certainly some times, especially from the perspective of needed social change or shunned sexual orientation. In most cases, though, keeping people from acting out on things they dont wish to acknowledge publicly is probably a good thing.

The problem enters with that most human of behaviors: corruption. As soon as the Panopticon is used towards political goals, rather than crime-fighting goals, that's when things get ugly. And things will get ugly. People suck, and they suck way too much to let an opportunity to blackmail others for personal or political gain get away from them.
Ethics? For most politicians, ethics is a big shiny object used (along with "morals") to distract the public from actually looking details (go down to #5). For many, when two people accuse each other of wrongdoing, the one who has the highest authority will often be the one who is believed. The more religiously fundamentalist one is, the more likely you are to believe an authority figure. And many people, both those who believe in Authority, and those who do not, are often too lazy to actually research the facts of a case themselves.

So, are we screwed? Is a life of invasive government surveillance our doom? Is it time to start stocking up on unlicensed firearms and cash-bought C4 for the inevitable (and no doubt futile) struggle to destroy as many public cams as possible?
No, because there's another solution. It's called sousveillance. It looks awkward to pronounce, I know (it's French-based, and pronounced "sue"-veillance), but you're already familiar with it. Everytime you see a video tape made by a citizen of cops beating a suspect, you've experienced sousveillance. The photos from Abu-Graib? Same thing. Even as the government and big-business gain massive intelligence gathering powers, the people get a load of cheap gadgets that, when combined with the internet and our natural inclination to gossip, provide a sort of balance. It's not perfect, and it wont take the place of good old-fashioned accountability (of the sort that the Bush Administration resists with every fiber of its being) or transparency (ditto). But the combination of sousveillance, accountability and transparency should balance out the potential (and likely, given human nature) harm of mass surveillance.

But in the meantime, worry. And watch. And be extremely suspicious of any rule that limits things like cameras in public arenas, or eliminates anonymity on the internet.

Oh, and pay cash.

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Some reading:

• an article on the "Participatory Panopticon".
• a paranoid article about our modern panopticon, and a really paranoid article about our modern panopticon.
• "Escaping the Panopticon".
• The Transparent Society, by David Brin (which, I confess, I didnt finish).
• The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks (a fun but rather out there piece of fiction).