Tim May wrote: >The notion that a Panopticon (everything being watched) is desirable is >one of the weirdest mutations of political theory in the past century.
Bentham's Panopticon has beguiled watchers since its invention. What the notion does is hypnotize the watchers into believing they really do see everything, and this notion still inspires vast funding for surveillance programs around the globe. But those who are supposedly being watched can fairly quickly learn that the watchers are drunkened by their surveillance conceits, as prisoners did in Bentham's day, and devise means and methods to hide in the inevitable gaps in oversight systems. What surveillance systems do, and the more powerful the more corrupting, is to lull the operators and the customers into diminished awareness of human ingenuity and capability, literally becoming numbed to daily challenges to keep senses alert and responsive to new perceptions not known or understood at the time the oversight systems were devised. Another consequence of panopticonism is the heightened susceptibility of abuse, bribery, blackmail and coercion of the operators and the customers. As well as the production of phony revelations and disinformation about the systems capabilities and applicabilities. Practitioners of panopticonism and counter-panopticonism are at each others' throats with wild claims and counterclaims, and the most common accusation is criminality, which may be laughable in a field where criminality is by definition moot. Panopticonists always presume to be above the law, asserting that they serve to undergird law and its enforcement, and thus must be free of law's constraints to assure that the outer limits of law are protected. Counter-panopticists hoot at this, for they know from field experience how much the surveillists miss, then lie about. Spying, intelligence, and their counters and customers are inheritors of Bentham's alluring scam. Recall that Bentham's panopticon only works for believers in an omniscient deity. And those who believe in arms laughed at Bentham's success with the credulous in getting them to give up the fight without bearing arms. As we know about contemporary surveillance systems: a large percentage of them are dummies which work as well as the semi-credible real things. Again, as with deities and satellites and Wall Street offerings, not to mention in this holy cave, strong crypto.
