As Foucault talks about in his book, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison, one of the main
roles of prisons in our society is to maintain power over criminals as well as to
punish them. The way he describes it is to
keep prisoners separate and under constant surveillance so that there can be no
revolts, Foucault believes this is the best way to hold power of them, as they
have no idea when they are being watched and so the prisoners feel isolated and
alone. The prisoners are monitored by a higher power that they cannot see and
this is represented in Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the Panopticon prison.
This is mirrored in today’s society by the emergence of
security cameras and the ever present feeling of being watched. With advances
in technology it is hard to escape the feeling of being watched as there are
thousands of cameras all over the country. The government states that mass
surveillance is needed in order to maintain social control and to protect
society from criminal activity. However, many have criticised mass surveillance
as it is a violation of privacy and some even fear it will lead to a
totalitarian state or an electronic police state. This means that the
government would use electronic technologies, such as monitoring phone calls,
checking emails, video surveillance and more to record and monitor its
citizens. I have to agree that this is a massive violation of personal privacy.
But what can be done about it? It seems with each technological advance comes a
bigger violation of privacy. While the government attempts to justify their
actions, it is us, society, that is paying the cost. It’s understandable to
want to protect ourselves from outside threats but how far are we willing to
go? And when does mass surveillance stop being purely for the protection of
society, and instead start being used for mass social control?
Our relationship to surveillance is indeed a contemporary and ongoing debate to be had and I see it as a great example of where the discipline of philosophy can make genuinely substantial contributions to some of the questions that you have rightfully raised.
ReplyDeleteIf there were literally a totalitarian state, the fear of which you allude to, then we would become patently aware of being forced to conform and perhaps then we might revolt. Foucault, however, has realised that the essence of contemporary control does not necessitate such manifest totality. To produce what he terms docile bodies, with qualities suited to the economic requirements of the modern industrial age, requires a more careful and discrete form of observation and moulding within institutions over a period of time. Through such observation and normalisation the disciplinary behaviour becomes internalised by the bodies being controlled and so they moderate their own behaviour. Docile bodies enact self-discipline, that is where modern power resides; we ourselves do the disciplining on behalf of hierarchical structures and this to me is the most shocking revelation.
As you mentioned the advancement of technology has expanded the remit of surveillance. I find it fascinating to evaluate how our definitions of surveillance continue to develop. It is no longer merely a visual or auditory act but rather subtly pervades through so many aspects of our daily behaviours.
Let us consider what is a bit of an old chestnut – Google. You may have noticed Google's new terms and conditions? They now collate data from all their services e.g. search, email, google+ storing a history of every piece of information in order to build up a profile and produce targeted advertising and search results. There is no 'prison guard' physically observing this, but over time I suspect one might self moderate their behaviour if their profile became... well, I’m not sure what might come up. In such a case surveillance seems to have transcended the visual and auditory and is arguably disciplining our thoughts. If we start moderating our own thoughts, now that seems more disturbing than simply refraining from committing petty crime on CCTV.
In this manner, filling out forms and allowing our data to be analysed, I see a certain coalescence between surveillance and Foucault's notion of Biopower.
Viewing these issues through a Foucauldian lens, if we remark, “this is a violation of my privacy”, and are met with the reply, “well if you're not doing anything illegal”, we should fulfil our duty as philosophers and enlighten them on the subtle power of behavioural moderation. For example, when in an airport security check people often feel nervous and act differently even though they are not going to do anything wrong, they just feel a compulsion to self-consciously overly moderate their behaviour. Thus, I would argue that it is not so much a violation of privacy, as a preservation of behavioural agency and autonomy that should be our main concern.
Jack Mallard - N0242276 [sic] For consistency, I am not a number.
Thanks Vicky. Very well put and a very incisive application of Foucault's discourse to the heightened amplification of security in our lives. I think what was valuable in your contribution is that you discern the tension between transgression of private selves, and the public implementation of methods of control. In addition, I think what Jack said has some purchase here as well. What Foucault is really talking about is paradoxical in a way, it is the ability to exercise control without excessively coercive means. The human becomes habituated to means of control, so for example, with security cameras they are there watching us continuously but at the same time, we have become so used to them we have taken them for granted thus rendering them invisible. So, in answer to your final rhetorical question, what is even more macabre is that social control is implemented without even the power of the state, it is done by us ourselves. If your interested you might look at some of Foucault's work on the idea of security. This is evident in his later work Security,Territory, Population.
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