The Great Indian Panopticon

Today the world looks somewhat like the Panopticon, which was introduced by the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham. He created this design for prison systems of our disciplined society. Where a central tower in the middle of an outer layer of a circular structure containing cells is built. And each cell has a window on the inner side facing the central tower so that the prison guards are able to have a constant view of the inmates.

But the inmates wouldn’t be able to see at any given moment if they are being monitored. You may wonder how this is similar to us in our everyday life, other than obviously still being present in some of the world’s prison systems. Philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept of Panopticism explains this similarity, where citizens around the world are constantly being watched by governments exploiting their authority. China is an incredible example of when this Panopticism comes to life, and the kind of environment it creates in a society.

           In the piece ‘Panopticism’, Michel Foucault mentions the major impact of these mechanisms, which is to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. He writes that, “the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary”. Many authoritarian governments around the globe have abused their power and have set up mass surveillance systems to keep an eye on their powerless and clueless citizens. This academic piece focuses on the situation in China, and that is due to several reasons, the first and most important being that they have let their citizens know about the sophisticated and huge scale of the surveillance program created by the state. Following Bentham’s great principle about power, that it should be Visible and Unverifiable. Much like the inmates in a prison, Chinese citizens know that they could be always be watched but they wouldn’t be able to determine if they are being watched at any given moment. In addition, China has already announced that all cars sold in the year 2019 would have a chip embedded in them allowing the government to monitor any and all of their movements. For me, as someone from a democratic country, this is extremely shocking and unimaginable.

           This is not limited to just one country, many major governments around the world have been found time and again to spy on their citizens and violate their fundamental rights. And America is one of them, but still, it doesn’t publicly admit conducting any kind of surveillance on citizens. However, today most Americans have some sort of awareness and concern about the monitoring carried out by different government agencies in the dark. As a student in the United States, I am frightened to imagine an America where the government is publicly monitoring its people. And I am even more scared to think about the future, which can be similar to the full-scale public monitoring system established in China.

           People have become sources of information for governments, and it seems that it is extremely difficult to stop the transition of America into a surveillance state. This is because of the advantages to the government such as to enforce laws more efficiently and decrease the occurrence of unwanted events and maintain national security. But this sometimes leads to major rights violations of citizens and examples of that can be seen all around the world, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. People who have lived in countries where this is not present don’t have any idea about the massive influence of continuously being watched and sometimes do not value the privacy they are privileged with.             

Imagine a scenario, where each person is controlled and monitored from their birth to death by a single authority and this happens with all 7 billion citizens of the earth. This could become reality within the next few decades as each country follows the path of technological advancement and competition from other nations. It is important to know that today at least 20-30% people around the globe are already being constantly watched, so the day doesn’t appear to be far when all of us are trapped in this panopticism. This is worse than the panopticon in penal systems, as there are many other forces such as terrorist organizations present in the world which can exploit this surveillance state and potentially misuse it to their best interests.

Some governments are using this weapon to brutally victimize and restrict minorities (along with basically anybody who doesn’t align with their interests), and China is again a great example of that. The development and growth of Muslim Uighur communities with populations in the millions is being restricted. Could this be the case in America? Where there are so many minorities presently living. With the Office of The President of the United States and legislative branches full of selfish and capitalistic slaves that don’t care about their citizens, this could definitely be true. Just like the Muslim ban, the POTUS can simply order that all Muslims in America originating from those countries be monitored. He may be able to do that secretly with an executive order to the NSA, and we may not even know about it. It has been time and again observed that the creation of a racist police force can also be a consequence of this panopticism. With controversial and often racist police forces all across America, this kind of technology would just deteriorate the condition and significantly increase their capabilities.

The deadly combination of surveillance and Artificial Intelligence have created monster machines and technologies that all nations are trying to develop. And ultimately, AI would play a key role in central inspection mechanisms. The aim is to completely integrate surveillance and AI so that the human role can be minimized. So, the future seems to be a place where all of us are being monitored by a “god” created by humans. This god would not let us make mistakes and grow up like normal people and forgive us for our sins. The human race will turn into a sort of a ‘robot-like’ species, where everyone is controlled and told what to do and what not.

The surveillance industry is expected to reach around $40 billion in the next two years, seeing tremendous growth thanks to groups of customers this industry caters, which are really the people who run the world. The “Big Data” industry is again another way our privacy is always at risk. These mechanisms for discipline are truly spreading and extending into all parts of the social body, hence, Foucault’s assessment seems to be true. It is amazing how we as people are not expressing enough concern about the direction in which our world is heading. Amazon, Facebook, US Government, Equifax, Yahoo, Google, and an unknown number of entities throughout the globe know so much about us and our behavior that even we don’t know ourselves. And citizens lack awareness about the way they are getting influenced by so many parties present in our society though different mechanisms in our social structure. The next generation would grow up to be control freaks and creativity would be crushed, because they would be in this prison as soon as they are born as if they committed a crime by taking birth.