Power of Surveillance

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I am not against surveillance and the fact that it is everywhere, from cameras CCTV cameras to data collection. I think surveillance, especially data collection, makes our lives easier. Stalder, shares this view, as he states, "Complete absence from databanks is neither practical nor desireable" (122). He also points out that surveillance is not the problem, but the fact that surveillance powers and control are concentrated into the hands of few. Even though this is not the same as Foucault's idea of a panopticon, it is still a panopticon none the less because any one company that compiles these data banks can see thousands of people's activities, but we can not see them, nor do we know what they have access too. As Deleuze notes, we have moved out of the disciplinary society and into the society of control; we no longer exist as a signature, rather we exist as information. Data banks can not see what we look like or what we are doing (in the physical sense), but they can see where we have been, what we have bought, who we called, what we are looking at on the internet, what our literary or movie preferences are, and so on. This is a complete invasion of privacy and I think there is a breaking point for everybody, but there is not much we can do about it. The main surveillance is coming from much higher powers, such as governments, and until new drastic laws are created (but it is hard to imagine the government saying okay to laws that will inhibit their ability to monitor people in order to prevent crime and terrorism plots) there is no way to stop this force of rising surveillance.

Through massive data banks, the electronic world makes life so much easier for people, but at the same time, it allows us and our activities to be continually watched, monitored and recorded. Every technological change has created more opportunity and allowed humans to do more, but at the same time, it also has just as many negative effects. But, because we love or 'need' the new opportunities of new technologies, we put up with the negatives and get used to them. In order to stop this and take back our privacy, there would have to be a total reworking of the electronic world, which would require a lot of new laws that will change the way we live entirely. The question is, is our privacy worth all of that? We can't have the best of both worlds, so the question is, are we willing to give up the new freedoms and perks that new technology has created in order to maintain our privacy, or what is left of it? Stalder notes that we have barely any privacy left, but again that is not the problem as he states, "Rather than continuing on the defensive, by trying to maintain an ever-weakening illusion of privacy, we have to shift to the offensive and start demanding accountability of those whose power is enhanced by the new connections" (123). So, rather than complaining that we have no privacy, we have to focus our efforts on the people who have access to our personal information and insure that it is not being misused. Laws should be and hopefully will be implemented to control the distribution of our personal information, but even then, there are still higher powers, such as the government, who will have a green light to access of the information. But, as all surveillance programs state, they are only here for our safety and if we haven't done anything wrong than we have nothing to worry about. Therefore, it is an information panopticon and we must constantly be aware because we never know what information they are collecting and why.