"We live in a surveillance society." states the Government's Information Commissioner. He believes there has been a worrying rise in what he calls "dataveilance", by means of CCTV, credit card, mobile phone and loyalty card.
One "best practice" example of the surveillance society was recently identified by the Guardian newspaper. It reported that operators in Westminister council's underground CCTV control room are able to watch any London street. The article continues:
"Using the latest remote technology, the cameras rotate 360 degrees, 365 days a year, providing a hi-tech version of what the 18th century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham conceived as the "Panopticon" - a space where people can be constantly monitored but never know when they are being watched."
Leeds-based sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, in his book Liquid Modernity, suggests that the panopticon arrangement requires both the watched and the watchers to be tied to a physical space. In Westminster case, the watched are on the streets of London and the watchers are housed in close proximity beneath the streets. Bauman proposes that we are now entering a post-panopticon stage in history. The watcher is " no longer bound, not even slowed down, by the resistance of space."
Google has contributed to this post-panopticon future. Through the medium of its new Street View product, we can all peek into other people's streets, initially in major UK cities. For instance, it is possible for anyone using a computer or web-enabled mobile phone to obtain 360 degree views of some 22,000 miles of streets. The mapping of Leeds Metropolitan University's Headingley campus, for example, took place in the summer as the graduation tent was being erected.
Street View has proved controversial. People caught on camera have complained. Others, such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair are reported to have demanded that their property should be blanked out and hidden from view. The post-panopticon camera it seems knows of no digital divide, it watches both the citizen and the elite who would have previously inhabited the control-tower, overseeing the activity of the watched.
Footnote
In October 1968, on the White Album, the Beatles could tempt my generation to "do it in the road," because no-one would be watching. If they were here today, in our liquid modernity, surrounded by dataveillance, this song would probably not have been written
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