The Panopticon and PRISM
In the book, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault describes The Panopticon and its various uses in society. The Panopticon is a compound with a tower in the center and a ring of cells surrounding the tower. Figure 3 gives a basic representation of The Panopticon and its parts. People in the cell can be seen into from the tower, but those in the cells cannot see the people in the tower because of Venetian blinds and zig-zagged halls in the tower. In addition, all of the cells are separated from one another by partitions that cannot be seen through. The goal of The Panopticon is to maximize the number of people being monitored, without letting the observed know when they are being monitored. Foucault explains that The Panopticon can be used in workplaces, prisons, hospitals, and even schools to help improve productivity by monitoring the inhabitants. Foucault’s theory on why The Panopticon works is that by preventing the observed from knowing whether their supervisor is watching at any one moment, power is decentralized and applied equally to all of the inhabitants. This ensures that the inhabitants are always under the threat of surveillance and, therefore, of being caught doing something unwanted.
In relation to the NSA’s actions, The Panopticon has several similarities. One common trait is that with both The Panopticon and PRISM, it is nearly impossible to know whether or not you are being watched. The Panopticon uses blinds and twisted halls to obscure view of the observer, while PRISM uses court orders and classified labels to keep the public from finding out. In fact, the government’s pursuit of Snowden may even indicate that they will go to great lengths to stop the secret from getting out. Another similarity is in The Panopticon, the surveillance is being conducted from one point, the tower. With PRISM, the NSA has the massive data facility in Utah that will become the collection center for all of the data gathered. One significant difference is that while The Panopticon wants its inhabitants to know that they could be watched at any moment, the NSA successfully concealed PRISM’s existence for several years. Numerous congress members even claim to have been in the dark about what the NSA was really doing; a scenario that echoes George Orwell’s words, “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” Another way in which PRISM differs from The Panopticon is that The Panopticon prevents unwanted behaviors through indirect action such as fear and paranoia, however; the NSA stops terrorism by discovering the terrorist’s plans and directly intervening. Although there are some key differences between The Panopticon and PRISM, there is still a strong parallel between the two, which could point to a future where government surveillance has shed its secrecy and is omnipresent.