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I
am pretty sure Naomi Klein wrote this article...This was posted
almost a year after I downloaded it from the web... I appear to have
misplaced the author's name and I can't seem to locate it again with any
search engines...If I remember correctly it is Klein-- the content and
language are definitely reminiscent of her work. Kurt, Foucault examinations
in full-effect at Chapman, wanted to name our last album "panopticon"
or "the panopticon." I read this piece by Klein and insisted he
consider the important idea of fighting the panopticon. This article was the
inspiration for the arrows and adding the word "reversing" to
" the panopticon."
The
Inverted Panopticon: Reclaiming Surveillance--The Inverted/Subverted
Panopticon
Indeed,
not only is it feasible to suggest that there are ways out of the carceral
archipelago, I would also like to suggest that the Panopticon can be
inverted or perhaps subverted in order to provide a model for the
'reacting-back' of individuals against the institutions which seek to bind
and control them.
What
follows below is something of a 'thought-experiment': I am not claiming to
offer a definitive view of the modus operandii of the new social movements,
but rather want to suggest a possible model which demands further testing
and empirical research to ascertain its viability as a metaphor.
So,
let me begin this thought experiment by positing that there is a 'domain' of
society - roughly speaking, a 'public sphere' - which in fact observes
institutions themselves and scrutinizes them - albeit naively and idly - for
infractions of the more basic human rights or standards of decency and
accountability. This public sphere is 'naïve' because it has no particular
knowledge of the internal workings and dealings of corporations and/or
nation-states: it is, for example, not trivial for Joe or Jane Public to
know which factories Nike has contracted out to manufacture its shoes, and
whether these factories adhere to basic labour standards. But if Joe or Jane
were to be reliably informed that Nike were utilising Chinese sweatshops
with no regard whatsoever for human rights, Nike risks going the way of
Kathie Lee Gifford unless it can be extraordinarily light on its feet and
charming in its PR. In short: the public gaze - properly directed - carries
a great deal of weight.
But how can
this gaze be directed? How can we 'model' the relations which uncover abuses
of corporate trust and 'focus' public attention upon the transgressors?
Perhaps the answer lies in not a rejection of Foucault's metaphor, but
rather an inversion of the power relations it entails: an 'inverted
Panopticon', in which the power relations of domination and exploitation
which are present in everyday life are turned on their head by the actions
of activists [see fig.1]. fig.1 - the 'Inverted' Panopticon
Now,
instead of institutions (be they states, corporations or any other dominant
organisation) acting as the observers inside the tower, they instead can be
pictured as the prisoners: not trapped physically, but symbolically by their
brand, their public image. Of course, anyone can see into these cells from
the outside - from the public sphere - into the cell, and see the presenting
his outward image: smiling and open-armed, inviting them to peruse every
inch of his or her cell. But, of course, the public's vision is blocked by
the prisoner's very presence: he or she can stand in such a way as to
obscure any less salubrious part of his/her cell: the public image is never
the whole story. In fact, the only way to outmanoeuvre the prisoner - to see
the whole picture of his/her doings - is to gain access to the tower behind
the cell. From the tower, the prisoner no longer blocks the view: the angle
has changed. And, indeed, by using his/her specialised skills (be they
hacking, 'culture jamming', or defacing a corporate website), the activist
can use various lines of flight - essentially lines of information passage,
such as corporate network gateways - to gain access to the tower and,
perhaps just for a split second, see the full picture: what is hidden from
the view presented to the public.
Thus,
once again, the operation of the inverted Panopticon is all a question of
the control of vision and the positioning of bodies. The framework of
Foucault's metaphor holds good in reverse: all the thought experiment does
is to turn the power/knowledge apparatus on its head and ask 'what if…'.
Control of the Panopticon is not inherently the privilege of a particular
social group: with the right skills, the right knowledge, the functioning of
the concept can be turned against those for whom it was originally designed,
bringing discipline through surveillance - manifested as transparency
through accountability - back into the institutions who would seek to impose
its operations upon us.
References
Castells,
M. 2000. Network Society: Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwells.
Foucault,
M. 1977. Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin.
-1981. History of Sexuality: Volume 1. London: Penguin.
Habermas,
J. 1992 (1969). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Cambridge: Polity.
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www.wordiq.com/definition/Michel_Foucault:
...The two contrasting modes of punishing are snapshots drawn from the
two types of what Foucault terms 'technologies of punishment'. The first,
the 'monarchical' technology of punishment involves the repression of the
populace through brutal public executions
and torture.
The second, 'disciplinary punishment' - which according to Foucault is the
form of punishment practised today - gives 'professionals' (psychologists,
program facilitators, parole officers, etc.) power over the prisoner in the
sense that the prisoner's length of stay depends on the opinion of these
professionals. Foucault compares modern society with Jeremy
Bentham's (unrealised in its original form, but nonetheless influential)
"Panopticon"
design for prisons, in which a single guard can watch over many prisoners
while themselves remaining unseen. The dark dungeon of pre-modernity has
become replaced with the bright modern prison, but Foucault cautions that
"visibility is a trap" - it is through this optics of seeing that
modern society exercises its controlling systems of power-knowledge. In this
way, Foucault suggests that there is something that connects the maximum
security prison with our everyday working and domestic lives, namely the
(witting or unwitting) supervision (surveillance, application of norms of
acceptable behaviour) of some humans by others. There is a 'carceral
continuum' stretching from the prison, through to secure accommodation, to
probation, social workers, the police, teachers... and us ourselves.
Panopticon blueprint by Jeremy Bentham, 1791
www.open-loop.org/public_html/surveillance_html/history.html
-- Michel
Foucault used the model of the panopticon to show how power is distributed
in an information society. Here, the individual is censored, perhaps
immobilized, by fear, through self-regulation rather than in reaction to
identifiable sites of control. In our time, panoptic oppression is not
applied as a means of discipline, but exploited as an overarching structure.
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Postmodern challenge of normative views of
power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics)
Some within the postmodern
and post-structuralist
field claim that power is something that is not in the hands of the few and
is rather dispersed throughout society in various ways and that power
relationships are part of everyday life. This is part of French philosopher Michel
Foucault's view, which he terms the microphysics of power and is
part of a European debate over how to define power. Foucault seeks to convey
a questioning of authority in various ways and also attempts to illustrate
the repressive nature of power through societal controls which include
institutional indoctrination (schools), surveillance (the police-state), and
defining normal and abnormal behavior so as to stamp-out any challenges to
the status quo. This view of power treads a line that leans more towards
institutions as the basis of societal control (see New
institutionalism) and ignores certain aspects of agency
and ideational
agendas. Power, according to Foucault, is 'ubiquitous' (everywhere in
society) and cannot be easily measured or critiqued without a great deal of
context. Critics such as Jurgen
Habermas and Noam
Chomsky charge that such views by Foucault and his followers are nihilistic
and even supportive of conservative
and Social
Darwinism views of society and defend the status quo of inegalitarian
societies, which Foucault claims is a misreading of both his intent and
conclusions which are that power must be questioned in all of its forms and
not simply those aspects that some might view as inegalitarian since even
humanism can be a mask for those seeking power. Ultimately, this concept of
power has helped political analysis to question both itself and the societal
controls that permeate all aspects of society, but the ambiguity of the
post-modern challenge has left many to use the methodology sparingly since
measuring power from a post-structuralist perspective remains somewhat
problematic. Nietzsche wrote: "how can we help it that power likes to
walk on crooked legs?"
- The beauty of anarchism: challenging power
in every aspect of life: rant 10 --
"all power to all people" is the logical equivalent of 'no
power to no people' (the former "all power..." slogan is
beautiful indeed, and it was the original motto/slogan of The Black
Panther Party, which were not about Black Power, but "All
Power to All People," regardless of melanin percentages! If you
have a chance I really suggest you listen to Bobby Seale's latest rants
@ alternative radio...brilliant.
I don't know if he is an 'anarchist' per se, but some of his ideas are
indeed on that path.
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Panopticon—The
Amazing New "Information Awareness Office (IAO)" Proves Big
Brother’s Eyes Really Are Watching Us Every Minute of the Day: Now
it comes out! Panopticon—the ultimate tool to track, spy, and target every
person 24 hours a day. The Bush Administration has publicly announced the
existence of a Top Secret government agency called the Information Awareness
Office (IAO). Headed by convicted Iran Contra criminal, U.S. Navy Admiral
John Poindexter, its logo is the Illuminati’s all-seeing eye and pyramid
watching over the globe of earth. The mysterious motto of this new Police
State agency is likewise mind-boggling: "Scientia est Potentia."
Everything Texe Marrs wrote about in his groundbreaking exposé book Project
L.U.C.I.D. is proven true—it’s here, what the Washington Times newspaper
calls "A Supersnoop’s Dream," a monstrous "Centralized
grand database," Spy-in-the-sky cameras everywhere. This scheme exceeds
anything that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ever dreamed about. All to prevent
terrorism and keep us all snug and secure
- You can’t separate peace from freedom,
because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
- Speech in New York City (7 January
1965); published in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and
Statements (1965)
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http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/05/a_seamless_surveillance_cultur.html
:
A Seamless Surveillance Culture
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
Despite urban legend that NSA surveillance is a
news media crusade because the majority of Americans
"approve" government surveillance to protect them from
terrorists, a new USA
Today/Gallup poll finds that almost two-thirds of Americans
are concerned that the monitoring may signal other, not-yet-disclosed
efforts to gather information on the general public.
This is the central question: Are all of these
NSA ingestion
and digestion programs merely more efficient efforts to apprehend
criminals and terrorists in the digital age, or are they the building
blocks of a new seamless surveillance culture?
The government's position is that if you are
"innocent," you have nothing to hide. It is a new
version of 'you are either with us or against us.' Massive
monitoring is of course meant to find terrorists; I completely believe
that this is not some 1960's enemies list politically motivated
effort. But these post 9/11 programs signal a new and different
problem.
People of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent
and Muslims are potential terrorists, machine selected as "of
interest."
Throw in there callers and travelers to Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia, recipients of wire transfers, purchasers of
fertilizer, flight school attendees. These are the new guilty
until proven innocent.
Innocent means of course mostly white, mostly
Christian Americans who accept that the government knows best and that
the national security state is only after the bad guys and would never
apply its new found capacities in any illegitimate way.
The government and its new seamless surveillance
culture are building a digital dividing line, even in our own society.
The assumption is one of an enemy in our midst.
The government's failure to provide for domestic
tranquility and basic security in our homes is rewarded by more power
for the government; "innocent" Americans are increasingly
primed and frightened to accept that greater government surveillance
is required by the realities of infiltration, ceding even more power.
It is as much a way of thinking as it is a way of life.
In his radio address Saturday, President Bush
said that "the privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in
all our activities."
"We are not trolling through the personal
lives of millions of innocent Americans," Bush said.
National security adviser Stephen Hadley said on
CBS' Face the Nation that "there are a variety of ways
in which [telephone call] records lawfully can be provided to the
government."
"These are business records that have been
held by the courts not to be protected by a right of privacy,"
Hadley said.
The Supreme Court ruled in the 1970's (Smith v.
MD, 442 U.S. 735) that government collection of phone call records did
not violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, that collection
of the numbers was not a 'search' and hence no warrant was required.
"[W]e doubt that people in general entertain
any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial," the
Court said. Telephone users convey numbers to the phone company,
the numbers are listed on bills, and there is no legitimate
expectation of privacy in information voluntarily turned over to third
parties. The caller assumes the risk that the phone company
could and would reveal the number dialed to the police, the Court
concluded.
Almost thirty years later, much has changed.
The government and the law enforcement agencies can not only seek this
information without a warrant to examine calls of suspect individuals.
With modern computing power and data crunching programs, the
government can now ingest all of the data seeking suspect individuals.
The starting point is different. In the 1970's, given
technology, targeting was necessary by virtue of efficiency.
Today, the computers and software are let loose on the data trawl,
looking for indicators of wrong-doing, tip-offs worthy of further
attention.
When the President says that the NSA is "not
trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent
Americans," I'm sure he is saying to "innocent"
Americans shouldn't be concerned that the computers and the new
surveillance will tag them as "of interest." Innocent
Americans is the key here, not trolling. The personal lives and
privacy of innocent Americans, so the argument goes, are safe from the
computers because their activities are not triggering the system.
In today's post 9/11
we've-got-to-give-up-some-liberties-to-fight-terrorism-world, the
expectation is being created though that it is normal then for the
government to churn through the phone records and Email headers and
credit card receipts and bank records of EVERYONE for tip-offs and
triggers. What started as an expectation that individuals
already of interest to the law enforcement agencies had no expectation
that their records were private has digitally expanded to the
expectation that no one's records are private.
White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino says that
the government has and will continue to be aggressive in exploiting
intelligence resources to target al Qaeda. The government's, she
says, is "going to continue to use those tools to their fullest
lawful extent until they're no longer necessary."
Political scientist Richard Eichenberg of Tufts
University told USA Today that "the public's tolerance
for this sort of invasion of privacy may be topping out. It may
be people are starting to say: 'When is the other shoe going to drop?
What else are they doing?'"
Right now, I don't think that there is a
"what else." But tomorrow, there could be an illegal
immigrant tax and pay record monitoring tip-off system, a sexual
predator and pornography attention algorithm, a drug dealing and
buying behavior inconsistency profile.
Two-thirds of Americans polled by USA Today/Gallup
say that are concerned that databases will identify innocent Americans
as possible terrorism suspects.
With the new seamless surveillance culture,
Americans are right to be concerned. In our zeal to identify an
enemy in our midst, we have applied 1970's laws and pre-digital age
thinking to the problem of privacy and security. The end product
is an assumption of two Americas -- one innocent and one threatening.
It is an assumption that itself enhances government power and
facilitates greater abuse.
By William M. Arkin |
May 15, 2006; 8:22 AM ET | Category: Intelligence
, War
on Terrorism
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Records are just the Tip of NSA's Iceberg | Next: There
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