Surveillance Is Important To The Development Of A Utopian Society

The government is always watching to ensure safety of their country, including everything and everyone in it. Camera surveillance has become an accepted and almost expected addition to modern safety and crime prevention (“Where” para 1). Many people willingly give authorization to companies like Google and Facebook to make billions selling their personal preferences, interests, and data. Canada participates with the United States and other countries in monitoring national and even global communications (“Where” para 2). Many question the usefulness of this kind of surveillance (Hier, Let, and Walby 1).However, surveillance, used non-discriminatorily, is, arguably, the key technology to preventing terrorist plots (Eijkman 1). Government

The most effective characteristic of controlling people in a dystopia is constantly have people under surveillance. In a dystopia, everyone should be under control by something. Whether it is by a leader, a government, or cameras. They should be clearly monitored and there should be laws set in place for everything.

The Panopticon is a prison created by Jeremy Bentham that was designed so that the prisoners could be seen at all times by the guard but the prisoners were not able to see the guard. Light was shined at the prisoners through a tower at the center of the prison so the guards could see everything but the prisoners cannot. The prisoners do not know when the guard is watching them so they have to assumed that they were always being watched. Since the prisoners do not know when the guard is monitoring them, they will have to behave properly at all times. This creates authority over the ones who are controlled. The Panopticon allowed less guards to be in control and more prisoners to be controlled. That made the observer more powerful over more people. The Panopticon is similar to modern society. We follow discipline because we are not sure when we are being monitored. Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Panopticism, predicted how our society is similar to the panopticon. Panoptism is used

Mass surveillance is a word that has been thrown around every so often in the last few decades, especially ever since George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although this book was released over 60 years ago, some aspects of the book are seeming to become true in the United States, and other parts of the world today. The idea of mass surveillance isn’t so taboo anymore, as there are several programs ran by sovereign countries around the world which monitor their domestic citizens, as well as citizens and leaders of other foreign countries. With all of our technological communication advances since 1949, this age of information is only going to get more severe, and more tracking and monitoring will be done. The biggest offender of doing

This essay will aim to critically discuss CCTV cameras as a proven method of crime control and prevention tool. In order to analyse academic, official and Non Government Organisation (NGO) studies, it is important to consider the rise of CCTV. CCTV is the one of the fastest growing forms of surveillance and crime control in the UK. CCTV was gradually diffused

Historically, the concept of hierarchal observation uses architecture to attain a single ‘gaze’ over an entire body of people. Foucault illustrates that “the perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly” (Rabinow, 1984). Therefore, these specific types of architecture were being developed in hospitals, asylums, schools and most notably, prisons. Thus, Foucault focused on Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, developed in the late 1970’s, to illustrate how hierarchal observation affects the individual. The emergence of panopticon like architecture allowed for power to be effective, and economic – one guard can watch many inmates. Accordingly, the use of the panopticon in prisons allows for a hierarchal observation because whether or not someone is watching, prisoners are made to believe someone of higher power such as a guard or warden are watching. Foucault illustrated that a problem with creating panopticon like architecture is that, “they are no longer built simply to be seen or to observe, but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control of individuals”

The cameras make people feel safer knowing that bad guys are being watched. In fact, the surveillance system in London, also called the “Ring of Steel,” is the most advanced in the world, containing half a million cameras and license plate readers. To much surprise, studies have shown that in London, only one crime is solved every year per thousand cameras (After Boston, 2013). It is almost impossible for police enforcement to examine hundreds of hours of video surveillance to find only a few seconds of the crucial footage needed to solve a crime. Even after finding the necessary film showing a suspect committing a crime, the tape is not sharp enough for someone to be able to determine what the criminal’s exact features are. Like in the recent New York bombings, the suspect would have been identified many days earlier if only there were a clear picture. The worldwide government is taking millions of peoples’ tax dollars and putting it toward a system that isn’t even

“The Politics of Surveillance: Big Brother on Prozac,” explores motives behind increased CCTV surveillance and the question of why CCTV cameras have become so significant in the United Kingdom. Closed-circuit television, CCTV, is video surveillance transmit technology that sends signals to set monitors. This source cited “Crime and the City” in explaining the worldwide use of this surveillance technology. In the United Kingdom, many public and private investments were made to increase street surveillance with CCTV in the 1990s. This dynamic surveillance growth is a major regulation of society influencing public and politics life as seen in the “Crime and the City” survey analysis. Small scale CCTV projects in UK buses, parking lots, and shops

In Panopticism by Michel Foucault, the idea of societal discipline is demonstrated through specific guidelines which were inspired by an architectural structure designed by Jeremy Bentham.  Bentham’s creation of the Panopticon was a structure that provided the people with maximum supervision with few supervisors. The actual physical structure was a circular building with a tall tower in the center which provided the guard the ability to see any cell at any given point in time, but also the inmates the inability to communicate with each other. The people did not know if they were being watched; consequently, they would be on their best behavior at all times. The ultimate goal was for the inmates to not only self govern themselves but also to govern their peers creating a positive atmosphere for all of the inmates.

Originally derived from the measures to control “abnormal beings” against the spreading of a plague, the Panopticon is an architecture designed to induce power with a permanent sense of visibility. With a tower in the center, surrounded by cells, the prisoners can be monitored and watched at any given time from the central tower. The goal of this architectural plan was to strip away any privacy and therefore create fear induced self-regulation amongst the prisoners, with an unverifiable gaze - The prisoners can never

In William E. Thompson and Joseph V. Hickeys article “A Surveillance Society” they inform you that cameras are basically everywhere. There are some cameras that you are aware of and then there are those that can’t be detected. The cameras are never really turned off, they’re always surveying and taking pictures 24hrs a day. High surveillance has grown dramatically all over the world in places like shopping malls and other social areas. There have been millions of cameras placed in Britain who has been the most active in setting up security cameras and monitoring systems as well as in The United States. The 9/11 attacks have really made America take a serious step in surveillance by installing so many different cameras to take pictures and to

Every individual is seen however cannot communicate with the jailers or other detainees. The panopticon affects a feeling of perpetual visibility that guarantees the working of force. Bentham declared that power ought to be obvious yet unverifiable. The detainee can simply see the tower but never knows if he is being watched. The twentieth century French theorist Michel Foucault understood that that model could be utilized for detainment facilities as well as for each establishment that looks to control human conduct: schools, healing centers, work environments. Once more, Foucault said that this mentality, this system found by Bentham, was the key method for societal control for cutting edge, Western social orders, which no more need the plain weapons of oppression rebuffing or detaining or murdering nonconformists, or legitimately convincing dependability to a specific gathering on the grounds that mass observation makes a jail in the psyche that is a considerably more inconspicuous however a great deal more powerful method for encouraging consistence with social standards or with social conventionality, significantly more successful than forced power could ever

In reading “A Surveillance Society” by William E. Thompson and Joseph V. Hickey cameras are a familiar thing to most people, but sometimes we are unaware that we are even on camera. In today’s age the use of surveillance is growing dramatically especially after the events of September 11, 2001. Surveillance systems seem to be everywhere now including but not limited to government buildings, gas stations, the bank, and others. There are other types of surveillance equipment other than cameras as well like, unmanned aerial vehicles and ankle monitors. The nation’s government and major corporations are using these cameras. Which some of these cameras can even recognize the person and bring up a detailed file on that person. These agencies are

The mass surveillance and the invasion of privacy has been on a steady incline since the 1980s. No one knows for sure how many closed-circuit television cameras have be are installed, but estimates range from 3.2 to 4.2 million. (“Right of Privacy”). Not only has mass surveillance increased but also the amount of terror attacks have also increased around the world. The protection of a nation's citizens is the most crucial and is highly important for a nation's success. Although privacy should never be taken away, terror attacks and domestic violence can be avoided if government had access to emails, phones, and documents; therefore, surveillance of individuals suspected of foreign or domestic terrorists is necessary.

Within any society, information gathering and surveillance mechanisms exist. The sophistication of this information gathering varies, but at all levels; the information gathered can be received voluntarily or involuntarily. The collection of information, whether it is surveillance received at a traffic road crossing, or satellite images from outer space, occurs every day. Everyday life is subject to monitoring, checking and scrutinizing. To find a place or an activity, which is shielded from some kind of surveillance device is difficult. The ability for governments to have such surveillance capabilities is due to the growth of computer application areas and technical enhancement that are central to surveillance. The ability of nation