> The point of surveillance is the same as Bentham's original panopticon, that is to say discipline people by making them discipline themselves.
If you want your opinion to change things, I recommend not going into the intend.
I work in the public sector of Denmark, and we’ve increased our surveillance as much as everyone else. Often it happens after someone commits a crime. When a citizen assaulted on of our desk clerks, surveillance was stepped up to increase employee comfort. At no point during any of the pro-con discussions did anyone intentionally discuss or express any intent in terms of wanting to make our visiting citizens self-regulate. In fact the very opposite happened as it was brought up as a major concern, that we would deal with by hiding a of the additional cameras from view.
I’ve been around the top decision makers for long enough to know exactly what would happen if they happened to read something along your thoughts. They would easily dismiss it, because they in fact had the exact opposite intend.
If you want to make them listen, you need to focus much more on the result, which is exactly as you outline it. People start to self-regulate, and the negative consequences of this psychological response to being watched. Because that is the only way you’ll get your message out without people dismissing you as a conspiracy theorist or fear monger.
> At no point during any of the pro-con discussions did anyone intentionally discuss or express any intent in terms of wanting to make our visiting citizens self-regulate.
Are you sure about that? I’m sure nobody said it out loud, but I have a hard time believing these people rather wanted to endure another assault just as long as the perpetrator was caught on camera. It seems more logical that the intention was to prevent another assault.
> In fact the very opposite happened as it was brought up as a major concern, that we would deal with by hiding a of the additional cameras from view.
Which is a core principle of the panopticon. If you normalise the practice of hidden surveillance cameras people will have no choice but to self-regulate all the time, not just when they can see the actual camera.
> Are you sure about that? I’m sure nobody said it out loud, but I have a hard time believing these people rather wanted to endure another assault just as long as the perpetrator was caught on camera. It seems more logical that the intention was to prevent another assault.
You have to consider how these decisions are made in a large political organisation.
In my specific example the people making the decision never actually spoke to the employees on the floor, they just assumed more surveillance would signify that they were reactive and took the issue of safety serious. Along with cameras they improved alert procedures so that now all our janitors are summoned when the alarm is pressed. (This may sound odd in countries where citizens have guns, but it’s not that weird here).
I can’t claim that no one wants to impact citizen behaviour through things like surveillance, but I’ve never experienced any sort of evil motivation in any top level decisions even when the results turned out to be evil.
Most people genuinely aren’t evil, especially not people who have been successful enough to reach positions of actual power. They make bad decisions, but they tend to do so while they are trying to do good. Sometimes money is involved making the area a little more grey, but you’re really not going to find a lot of Hollywood CIA bosses gone rogue or super villains in the real world.
If you want to make people listen, it’s important to understand that. If it’s easier for you to still think of these people as evil, then there is an old punk quote that goes: “the guilty don’t feel guilty, they learn not to.” and I don’t say this jokingly. If you don’t take the fact that the pro-surveillance people actually mean well, even if they are very wrong, you’re just never going to get through to them, but what is worse, you’re not going to get through to anyone else who isn’t already on your side either. Because your points will be dismissed the moment you claim that someone is installing cameras to intentionally alter psychological behaviour.
You have to keep in mind that decision makers work together, and while they may appear to be very much opposed to one-another in public, they’ll also be spending long hours working together to come up with compromises behind doors. So even the anti-surveillance decision makers know that that pro-surveillance decisions makers mean well, because they’ve spend hours upon hours discussing it in private.
I hear you, but I don’t think even Jeremy Bentham himself was evil. I’m not sure surveillance is inherently evil either. Just that it may not always be as good of a deal for society as it seems.
But the material reality is still that the mechanism of action of a surveillance camera is to induce self policing. Without it it becomes worthless whether your intentions for putting it up are good or not.
Or maybe they were shopping for force field projectors and ordered cameras by mistake.
I really appreciate the sentiment you're conveying here, and you put it well. A quick browse of your profile suggests this isn't an anomaly in your posts, either.
If you want your opinion to change things, I recommend not going into the intend.
I work in the public sector of Denmark, and we’ve increased our surveillance as much as everyone else. Often it happens after someone commits a crime. When a citizen assaulted on of our desk clerks, surveillance was stepped up to increase employee comfort. At no point during any of the pro-con discussions did anyone intentionally discuss or express any intent in terms of wanting to make our visiting citizens self-regulate. In fact the very opposite happened as it was brought up as a major concern, that we would deal with by hiding a of the additional cameras from view.
I’ve been around the top decision makers for long enough to know exactly what would happen if they happened to read something along your thoughts. They would easily dismiss it, because they in fact had the exact opposite intend.
If you want to make them listen, you need to focus much more on the result, which is exactly as you outline it. People start to self-regulate, and the negative consequences of this psychological response to being watched. Because that is the only way you’ll get your message out without people dismissing you as a conspiracy theorist or fear monger.