Sleepycatz

The Panopticon State

With the passage of the Homeland Security bill and the the US Patriot Act, I am becomming ever more concerned about our government’s relationship to us — the people. The times we live in tend to dictate our reactions and emotions. Troubled times, such as those we are now experiencing, tend to fire our baser instincts: the need for safety, the need for order, the desire for vengeance, etc. Yet, the freedoms or privacies given up to make us feel safer are very difficult to re-obtain once relinquished. Such is my concern regarding the Information Awareness Office (agency logo above). Created by the Homeland Security Act and slated to be run by John Poindexter, the IAO sole mission is to gather and analyze all the information it can — who goes where, who buys what, who speaks to whom, etc. and search for patterns of questionable activity. To accomplish this goal, the IAO cannot simply target individuals; rather, it must cast the broadest net possible; for how can you establish what is abnormal activity, until you have set a baseline for what is normal. Yet, that is not the full intent of the agency. In the 19th century, philospher Jeremy Bentham devised a penal housing system in which gaurds sat in the center of an great circle and prisoners on its periphery. Windows in the cells allowed the gaurds to monitor the acivity of prisoners at all times, yet the prisoners would not be able to view the gaurds due to lighting conditions. Thus, prisoners were expected to behave, as they would never know when they were under observation. This is the panopticon. It is not a system in which we are all scrutinized all the time, but one in which we know that one of us may be under scrutiny at any moment. This is the essance of the IAO. Not to inform us that we are being watched, but that they are watching. There are those who suggest that unless one is doing harm, one should not be concerned about governmental surveillance. I suggest that history has shown us otherwise. It has shown us time and again that those willing to abuse the powers of their office eventaully find themselves in positions of enormous power. In other words what we may believe to be a benevolent goverment of today, may become the dictatorship of tomorrow. Governments, particarly representational governments, adapt and change on a regular basis. Where one interation of state authority may search for one pattern of behavior a different interation may search for another. But always we will know that we may be under observation, and expected to act accordingly. \r\n\r\nBy the way the logo displayed at the top is the IAO logo — I orginally believed it to be a parody, until I saw the IAO website.

This entry was posted by steve on Sunday, December 1st, 2002 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Internet, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.