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Privacy and Technology
| Article
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18453 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1990 |
7,828 Words |
| Author
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Gary T. Marx
Gary T. Marx is professor of sociology at M.I.T. His latest
book is Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (University
of California Press, 1988). |
In the United States we recently celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of the Constitution, a document that extended liberty. Unfortunately, the bicentenary of another important document that restricted liberty has gone virtually unnoticed - the 1791 publication of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon; or, the Inspection House.
Bentham offered a plan for the perfect prison, in which there would be constant inspection of both prisoners and keepers. His ideas helped give rise to the maximum-security prison. Recent developments in telecommunications, along with other new means of collecting personal information, give Bentham's image of the panopticon great contemporary significance.
The stark situation of the maximum-security prison can help us understand societal developments. Many of the kinds of controls and information-gathering techniques found in prison specifically and the criminal justice system more broadly are diffusing into our culture. We may well be on the road to becoming a “maximum-security society.” Such a society is transparent and porous. Information leakage has become rampant; indeed, it is hemorrhaging. Barriers and boundaries - be they distance, darkness, time, walls, windows, or even skin - that have been fundamental to our conceptions of privacy, liberty, and individuality are giving way.
In such a society, actions, feelings, thoughts, pasts, and even future are made visible - often without the individual's will or knowledge. The line between the public and private is being obliterated; we are under constant observation, everything goes on permanent record, and much of what we say, do, and even feel may be known and recorded by others whom we do not know-whether we will this or not and even whether we know about it or not. Data in many different forms and coming from widely separated geographical areas, organizations, and time periods can be merged and analyzed easily.
As the technology becomes ever more penetrating and intrusive, it becomes possible to gather information with laser like specificity and sponge like absorbency. If we visualize the information-gathering process as a kind of fishing net, then the net's mesh has become finer and the net wider.
Just as free association led to discovery of the unconscious, new techniques reveal bits reality that were previously hidden or contained no informational clues. When their privacy is invaded, people are in a sense turned inside out, and what was previously
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