Surveillance and You

There has been many changes in the U.S. since 9/11.  One of the most terrifying of these changes is the surveillance that we are under no matter where we go.  I can barely leave my home before the first camera picks me up at the first stop light.  I remember when the first surveillance cameras began to show up.  I read an article by our then Mayor Billings that said the cameras on every corner was to promote more efficient flow of traffic.  But that never seemed to be the case.  Traffic remained slow and congested.  Then cameras where everywhere.  I would sit at a restaurant and see that there was camera pointed straight at me.  (And I was taught that it is rude to stare!) 

Surveillance is suppose to be the price we pay to be kept safe in our paternalist world.  But according to Michael Foucault, the french philosopher, it serves an entirely different purpose.  His argument was that when a society is continually being watched that it puts everyone on their best behavior and creates a "self disciplinary society."  Foucault thought that to be "visible is to be trapped."  He further stated that there will not need to be social structures or specific institutions of power but instead "power will be destructured and individualized, free-floating within society in multiple manifestations." 

The invisible power is watching, collecting data and information about us, documenting and recording and saving it for what....?  It is an odd thought to know that we are watched on camera, the Internet, our phones, our car GPS, through our purchases, school and work and yet we do not know who has access to this information or what they are doing with it.  We know that Google is tracking and saving our every search and our emails.  And Facebook's social networking allows them to have access to all your photos, family and friend connections.  This is all different forms of surveillance and monitoring that did not even exist a few years ago.  I just wonder what all this means and where we are heading in the future.  Smile! You are on candid camera!