DC rally against mass censorship. Flickr/Susan Melkisethian. Some rights reserved.
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison design is the ultimate template of passive disciplinary power. With a viewing tower located at the centre of the complex, prisoners could be watched at all times and in all locations. With the inmates not being able to see inside the tower, surveillance could never be proven, only felt. The possibility of continued surveillance was enough to threaten, coerce and ultimately modify behaviour.
In the digital age, surveillance is more opaque but the results are alarmingly similar. The Snowden revelations have highlighted the capacity of NSA and GCHQ to collate and harvest data from a range of digital platforms, as well as the desired aim to ‘collect it all’. This has brought to light a system that, due to its omnipresence, is able to target everyone irrespective of location, nationality or culpability. But with such a structure in place there is limited space for journalists to be able to investigate and question without fear of being watched.
