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ABSTRACT. Over the past two centuries, surveillance technology has advanced in three ma-
jor spurts. In the first instance the surveillance instrument was a specially designed building,
Bentham's Panopticon; in the second, a tightly controlled television network, Orwell's Big
vided total surveillance within the confines of its designated geographical coverage, but costs,
geographical coverage, and benefits have changed dramatically through time. In less than a
decade, costs have plummeted from hundreds of thousands of dollars per watched person
per year for analog surveillance or tens of thousands of dollars for incarceration to mere
being watched have increased enormously, so that individual and public resistence are mini-
mized. The end result is a fertile new field of investigation for surveillance studies involving
an endless variety of power relationships. Our literal, empirical approach to panopticism has
yielded insights that might have been less obvious under the metaphorical approach that has
dominated recent scholarly discourse. We conclude that both approaches--literal and meta-
change arising from the Information Revolution. We urge public and scholarly debate--local,
national, and global-on this grand social experiment that has already begun without fore-
'or 220o years the Panopticon has stood as the tangible symbol of total surveil-
lance, discipline, and control. Always it has been the utopian dream of some and
heavily in the late 1700s. Its pure form fizzled after a few decades but left an indelible
mark on social practice and discourse. A second manifestation, "Big Brother," was
feared intensely in the mid-twentieth century but later accepted in many places. It
left such a powerful mark on public discourse that now merely saying its name is
Since the mid-197os, scholars of surveillance studies have insisted that the
Panopticon should be taken not literally but as a metaphor for surveillance of all
%* DR. DOBSON is a professor of geography at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045-
7613. DR. FISHER is a research professor of geographical information at City University, London EClV
OHB, England.
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spurts, each of which triggered a new episode. In the first instance the surveillance
television network; and today, an electronic tracking service. Each had its own dis-
absolute tyranny; today, safety and security. Functionally, however, their root func-
tion is the same-total surveillance-and they are indeed three successive genera-
PANOPTICON I
More than two centuries ago the architect Samuel Bentham designed a building
that was actually a surveillance machine. Its optics were such that a single "inspec-
tor" could observe every occupant simultaneously. The people being observed would
be illuminated around the clock but could not see one another or their observer,
not even his shadow. He called it the "Inspection House," or sometimes the "Elabora-
tory." His brother, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, wrote twenty-one letters pro-
lightened-Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock-the [G] ordian knot of the Poor-
called it the "Panopticon" (all seeing). It was, he said, "A new mode of obtaining
power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example .... Such is the
engine: such the work that may be done with it" ([1787] 1995, preface).
Thirty years ago the philosopher/historian Michel Foucault called it "a cruel,
In the public mind today, the Panopticon is inextricably linked with prisons, but
the first and only true one was not a prison. It was a school of arts in Saint Peters-
of his design were incorporated into many prisons around the world, including
England's Millbank Penitentiary (1821) and the Virginia State Penitentiary (18oo00).
Bentham's circular design and failed so utterly that it was razed only seven years
later. The Eastern State Penitentiary, near Philadelphia (1829-1836), one of many
that adopted a radial rather than circular design, was touted as the model prison of
PANOPTICON II
When television came along in the 1940s, George Orwell imagined a new sort of
electronic Panopticon that would be far less expensive to implement and would
extend beyond buildings to streets and other public spaces ([19491 1950). He called
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it "Big Brother" and indelibly cast it as an enabling technology for totalitarian gov-
Orwell's vision incited fear, and the term itself became a rallying cry for those who
tyranny.
Today, alert citizens or visitors in certain countries quickly realize that Panopticon
an individual is imaged within one day range from tens to hundreds of times. The
density of these devices is huge in certain areas, and their installation is often wel-
comed by the local community because they are perceived as a deterrent to crime.
and scolded from loudspeakers for infractions as minor as dropping a piece of pa-
PANOPTICON III
Recently, Bentham's Panopticon has become a catchphrase for all sorts of electronic
viceable umbrella for what John Pickles called "the surveillant society" (1991, 1995),
what Daniel Sui dubs "the stolen geography" (2oo6), and what Harlan Onsrud la-
beled "the tragedy of the information commons" (1998). Its closest kin, however, is
geographic information systems (GIS), the Global Positioning System (GPS), and
based services" (LBS). Most LBS applications involve goods in transit, as when FedEx
packages are tracked every step of the way from sender to receiver. Locator "tags"
are placed on each product, package, pallet, or vehicle-or, lately, on each person in
distinguish goods from people, as when the product is clothing or when vehicles
Several technologies are available for human tracking. A GPS receiver can locate
in a cell phone. Coordinates are calculated by the device itself and sent via radio, cell
(RFIDs), come in two types, one for small spaces such as rooms within buildings
and the other for distances up to 40 miles. Short-range RFID chips may be smaller
than a grain of rice, but they can contain sizable amounts of personal information,
such as credit or medical histories. They can be worn as a tag or implanted beneath
the skin. Typically, they have no power source of their own, relying instead on en-
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ergy actively sent by the detector, whose receiver waits for an answer. Location is
Long-range RFIDS differ little from the radio transmitters ordinarily used in cell
phones, and cell phones themselves can serve the same function. Presently, cell
phones are the instrument of choice for human tracking. Reasonably accurate re-
sults can be attained purely by triangulating a cell phone's ordinary signals among
nearby cell-phone towers. Greater accuracy can be attained by installing a GPS re-
Similarly, any laptop computer logged into a wireless network necessarily sends
a radio signal that can be triangulated among several wireless antennas. One ven-
dor, Cisco, now sells software that enables wireless providers to track users. It is
intended for detecting "rogue" users, but it gives wireless providers the ability to
Regardless of how they are obtained, latitude, longitude, and (optionally) el-
provider. Frequent updates are fed into a GIs containing location and descriptive
rain, and much more) plus software and models to enforce any spatial and tempo-
ral rules the operator wishes to impose (Goss 1995; Monmonier 2002). Geofences,
for instance, appear as polygons with rules specifying whether the person cannot
enter or cannot leave each polygon. The service provider typically posts the person's
track, associated geographical features, and geofences as maps online, with access
inspectors.
humans, other than prisoners, at that time, but the technology surely existed, and
one zealous entrepreneur's proposal led Dobson to envision a new form of human
2006; Dobson and Fisher 2003; Fisher and Dobson 2003). Soon, reality caught up
with his imagination. Today, even its sellers call it "geofencing," a term that would
and even scholars often use "geoslavery" as a covering term for all forms of human
tracking. Shamus Toomey, a Chicago Sun-Times staff reporter, for instance, claims
that "Jerome Dobson ... coined the term'geoslavery' with colleague Peter Fisher in
ing" (2005). To the contrary, we formally defined the term in our initial "Geoslavery"
article, and our definition requires that it be either coercive or surreptitious (Dob-
son and Fisher 2003). Workplace applications raise all sorts of social, ethical, and
legal issues, but they do not qualify as geoslavery when workers knowingly and
voluntarily consent to being tracked for pay. As a rule, any application that would
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not be called "slavery" in its analog form should not be called "geoslavery" in its
electronic form.
"Nevertheless," William Herbert claims, regarding the United States, "a reason-
ably strong argument can be made that Congress does have the constitutional power
under the remedial provision of the Thirteenth Amendment to ban the use of track-
ing devices to dominate and control the location of others. Imposing restrictions,
control and monitoring over another's location constitutes a vestige and incident of
slavery" (200oo6, 429). Herbert is employed by the Civil Service Employees Associa-
tion Local looo of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Em-
ployees, the largest union in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of
Industrial Organizations, and he leaves no doubt that his statement applies to hu-
man tracking in the workplace as well as to other instances of human tracking. His
position rests not on the Thirteenth Amendment's ban on slavery per se but, rather,
on its ban on the vestiges of slavery. At the very least, Panopticon III constitutes, to
use Jeremy Bentham's words, "A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind,
FUNCTION
All three Panopticons are designed to maintain continuous surveillance, reduce the
cost of surveillance, and improve the efficiency of surveillance. In the first two, ab-
solute control over human actions was an express purpose of the proposed surveil-
required total submission to absolute authority. Yet Orwell's stark warning about
tyranny stands in marked contrast to Bentham's assurance that his machine would
be open "to the great open committee of the tribunal of the world" ([1787] 1995,
letter VI). Foucault wrote, "There is no risk, therefore, that the increase of power
created by the panoptic machine may degenerate into tyranny," because it would be
whether Foucault is stating his own view or Bentham's. In either case, the mere fact
that Bentham's machine "does not preclude a permanent presence from the out-
side" does not guarantee that authorities will welcome outsiders as fellow inspec-
tors in the tower (p. 209). Indeed, the premise clearly does not hold today, when a
the watched, is that observations and data will be held secure for viewing only by
inspectors who have a "need to know." The panoptic conundrum, as with many of
today's privacy laws that address health and financial information about individu-
als, is that the principle of open government clashes with the right to privacy when-
ments may not be the primary threat but, rather, corporations and individuals, not
safety and security. Indeed, in some instances ccTv footage has been used effec-
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tively in detecting serious crimes, identifying the London bombers of 7 July 2005,
for example. Yet major shortcomings have been found in the use and implementa-
tion of CCTV schemes. Some investigators have concluded that ccTV is unlikely to
(Gill and Spriggs 2005). Their position is bolstered anecdotally by the odd fact that
some perpetrators have been caught and convicted because they took videos of
not advancing the use of ccTV to control activities in private space. The installa-
purportedly to protect their own property or to monitor their nannies, for in-
stance.
Bruno Latour and Emilie Hermant claimed that police surveillance of Paris was
not a threat, because "the surveillance and policing networks simply graze the big
Paris that totally eludes them" (1998, 103). In their view, control is limited to certain
mandated functions, such as preventing riots, and police ignore other matters. Latour
"As their name indicates, the "pan-opticons" make it possible to see everything,
provided we also consider them as "olig-opticons," from the Greek oligo meaning
little, and found in words such as oligarchy" (Latour and Hermant 1998, 28). "It sees
little but what it does see it sees well" (p. 48). Therein lies a subtle warning, because
"oligarchy" means government by the few, precisely the fear that many latter-day
Orwells have about handing knowledge of their every move over to a new class of
In the modern case of Panopticon III, control may or may not be intended.
Rare, however, is the "inspector" who can watch and know and yet resist the tempta-
CosTs
Foucault stressed the importance of obtaining "the exercise of power at the lowest
possible [economic and political] cost" (1995, 220). He repeated this cost theme for
emphasis at least eight times. Bentham's main selling point for Panopticon I was
reduced labor costs. Not only could one inspector watch many people, but he could
even take a break now and then, for no one inside ever knew when he was at his post
and when he was not. Still, the buildings themselves were expensive, and only one
bor costs remain high. If countrywide implementation of Orwell's vision were de-
full time. On the other hand, major strides are being made in automated recogni-
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Initial
Purchase or Operating
investigators
original building
panopticon
Human-tracking cell-phone
systems towers
a Fees range from $40 to $75 per hour; the minimum annual cost at $40 per hour is shown here. The
same cost can obtained by estimating seven watchers at $50,000 each per year. Source: MLAN 2005.
b Based on the cost of construction per bed for a high-security prison (level 4). Source: CTDOC 2001.
c "The average annual operating cost per State inmate in 200ool was $22,650, or $62.05 per day. Among
facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it was $22,632 per inmate, or $62.01 per day" (James
2004, 1).
monitors, runs approximately $500-$1,000ooo per camera. Assuming that facial features can be recognized
to a maximum distance of 150 feet from each camera, the lower cost for wide-area coverage would
amount to $197,200 per square mile of interior or exterior space, even without redundant views. At resi-
dential densities of 25,000 per square mile, the cost of installation runs $7.88 per person. Sources: Cal-
culated by the author from surveillance equipment costs and speciffications found online at numerous
e Assumes seven watchers at $40,000 each per year monitoring twenty individuals.
tion of individuals in ccTV images using methods such as facial recognition and
gait analysis. Once an identification is made, automated tracking can follow an in-
dividual, and a spatial dossier of the person's movements can be composed in real
tain when the watched moves from the range on one sensor (camera) into the range
connections.
Panopticon III holds a tremendous comparative advantage over the other two
and certainly over any other means available today. In the analog world, anyone
who wants to control someone else has only a few ways of doing so. Incarceration in
prisons is extremely expensive due to the cost of construction ($125,000 per bed)
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and operation ($22,600 per inmate per year). If the subject is not imprisoned, then
he or she must be watched; and constant surveillance of people on the move is even
ers (say, $350,000 per year) (see Table I). Plus, surveillance on the move or even in
who wants to use it. Initial purchase prices and monthly service fees are equivalent
to cell-phone costs. In less than five years, the cost of continuous surveillance of a
single individual has dropped from several hundred thousand dollars per year to
less than $500 per year. Surveillance formerly justified solely for national security
and high-stakes commerce is readily available to track a spouse, child, parent, em-
GEOGRAPHICAL COVERAGE
One serious limitation of Panopticon I was that it could only be deployed, as Bentham
([1787] 1995, 207). In spite of his clear statement, later commentators have trans-
posed Bentham's building into a metaphor for surveillance of all forms. Lila Kalinich,
for instance, wrote, "Foucault takes care to remind us not to take this model too
the gaze, is finally a political schema, "a way of defining power relations in terms of
the everyday life of men" (p. 157). In this broad sense, the power of the Panopticon
extends wherever police may go or citizens are willing to tattle on friends. Such a
broad, generic definition was useful when technology was limited, but now there
are choices, each of which can be distinguished in measurable ways. We, therefore,
adhere to Bentham's original definition, and we hope other scholars will choose
cause it was too expensive to build, its areal coverage was limited to buildings, and
some of its most highly touted benefits turned out to be damaging in unexpected
ways. Prison reformers eventually realized, for instance, that the mental effects of
years spent in solitary confinement were as cruel as the physical abuses inherent in
filthy, violent, crowded cells. Orwell's Panopticon II overcame the construction limi-
tation of Panopticon I by relying not on mirrors and walls but on television cam-
though the latter far exceeds the former. Panopticon III is not confined to govern-
concrete walls could be moved about freely and used to incarcerate a person at
home one day, at work the next, at school, at church, and so on. Its only limitation is
the worldwide distribution of cell-phone towers and the irregular polygons of re-
ception that surround them. Jeremy Bentham would applaud, though Samuel, the
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The Bentham brothers viewed their invention in a totally positive light and pro-
moted it with religious zeal-and they were not alone. Panopticon I appealed to
social reformers for half a century, although later generations found it repugnant.
Orwell viewed Panopticon II in a totally negative light and sternly warned the
public through horrific visions portrayed in his novel 1984 ([19491 1950). Rarely has
a work of fiction generated such widespread public fear. One recent list of the most
influential fictional characters of all time ranks Big Brother number two (Lazar,
Karlan, and Salter 2006). Panopticon II was repugnant from the start, because of its
invasion of private space. But attitudes toward public space are different, and video
surveillance there has been welcomed by many individuals who perceive it as ad-
ing, less visible, and therefore less frightening than its predecessors. The overwhelm-
ing seduction, however, is that Panopticon III offers far more benefits to those being
watched than its predecessors ever did. It is difficult to conceive a single reason why
anyone would willingly walk into Bentham's cage and spend time there of his or her
own accord. Similarly, it is difficult to conceive a single reason why anyone would
choose to live under Big Brother's watchful eye if any other lifestyle were possible.
But there are ample reasons why people willingly choose to place themselves under
the watchful eye of Panopticon III. General Motors' OnStar tracking system is a
prime example of benefits that appeal to some people and repel others. To a still
wider public, the monitoring device is embedded in the mobile phone, an interna-
To latter-day Orwells, however, Panopticon III is even more frightening than its
predecessors because the "inspector" can follow wherever cell-phone towers go, the
devices are inexpensive enough for just about anyone to track just about anyone
else, and the systems can invade private as well as public space. Indeed, the simplest
devices are carried willingly and obsessively by the watched. Location information
the billing information recorded at the time of each mobile telephone call. More
these are applied to more people than all the inmates who ever spent time in build-
ings modeled after Bentham's original Panopticon. The Xora company alone claims
little comfort when Xora's chief executive officer, Sanjay Shirole, publicly announced,
promotional hype. The title page of his collected letters proclaimed the invention as
tals, Mad-houses, and Schools" ([1787] 1995). In his first letter, he elaborated re-
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garding its purpose: "Whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the
insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, main-
taining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of indus-
try, or training the rising race in the path of education" and "whether it be applied
to the purposes of perpetual prisons in the room of death, or prisons for confine-
All the same and more can be said of Panopticon III. To be clear, LBS and human
tracking offer so many benefits that they will be impossible to resist. Benefits, how-
ever, do not negate risks. It is wise to consider the risks on their own as, for instance,
one might consider the danger of lung cancer independent of the pleasures of smok-
ing. Clearly, Panopticon III has beneficial uses, such as caring for victims of Alzheimer's
disease. Just as clearly, the technology will be abused. Even "good" uses will change
society in fundamental ways, some intended and predictable, others unintended and
unpredictable. Abuses will undoubtedly occur, the greatest of them being geoslavery.
Geoslavery per se has no redeeming qualities, just as slavery itself has none.
Even in the most advertised case-parents with the best of intentions watching
relationship. It will do the same for teachers and students, husbands and wives,
employers and employees, and countless other social contracts. Imagine, for in-
stance, a generation of children who cannot disobey and workers who cannot break
ing devices along with class rings as tangible tokens of their commitments to one
another. Imagine what may happen when one of them unilaterally decides the rela-
Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to
purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (1759 [1812],
title page). President Dwight D. Eisenhower went even further: "If you want total
security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The
national news on 17 February 2006. The baseball star Albert Belle was alleged to have
hidden a tracking device in his former girlfriend's car. A judge ordered Belle to wear
a tracking device himself to ensure that he did not go near her again (AP 2006).
If there were no benefits, there would be far less risk. Today's society would
ORWELL'S WOLF
that will be far greater in magnitude than the actual application of Bentham's
Panopticon and more predictably certain than Orwell's Big Brother. Not long ago
the very idea of tracking people horrified the nation. Now, human-tracking systems
are sold openly by that name, with no ensuing public outcry or even much discus-
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sion. No state or federal law has been modified to regulate their use. In 2001, Senator
tion Act, but it went nowhere in Congress and did not become an issue in his subse-
quent campaigns. Recently, France passed a law that requires employers to notify
employees when they are being tracked but does not outlaw the practice.
"crying wolf." He cried it so well, and the cry was repeated so fervently so often by
so many, that most people eventually became inured. After a while, the cry of Big
Brother lost its sting. Television became a familiar companion rather than an in-
strument of oppression.
Latter-day Benthams say, "What's the big deal? Employers have a right to know
where their employees are. Parents have an obligation to oversee where their kids
go. Schools need to know where pupils are." Latter-day Orwells say it's the ultimate
realization of Big Brother. Some Christians claim that GPs-based human tracking is
the "Mark of the Beast" prophesied in the Bible (Revelation 11-18) (Albrecht and
McIntyre 2005). Actually, the biblical text explicitly addresses branding for identifi-
cation, an inevitable component of human tracking, but says nothing at all about
location monitoring.
A SILENT REVOLUTION
GIS is changing the world. Already it has revolutionized warfare, science, naviga-
tion, security, crime investigation, tax collection, transportation, and countless other
aspects of ordinary life. Panopticon III is just one facet of a societal revolution that
flow. It is, however, a strangely silent revolution. It would take some forethought to
plan an evening of television without seeing GIs on one or more crime shows, but
still the concept has not registered with most Americans. Cell-phone tracking is a
staple of forensic crime shows, but few viewers understand how it will impact ordi-
nary, law-abiding citizens. Most people do not even know the acronym "GIs" much
less the full term "geographic information system." Still fewer understand that ge-
their past and yet so insidious that hardly anyone seems to notice. Panopticon III is
are studies by child psychologists investigating how children will react, emotionally
teractions among culture and other technologies. Francis Harvey and Nicholas
Chrisman describe the "rhizomatic network" of GIs development since the 1950s
als who pioneered GIs and its precursors over a century and more (1998a). Technol-
ogy, like culture itself, changes in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways, always
interwoven with science and society. Introspective probes into the history and phi-
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Nicholas Chrisman (2004), Duane Marble (1990o), and Daniel Sui and Matt Ball
(2oo6)-are rare, and they are needed now more than ever, especially for under-
Oddly, the community of scholars devoted to surveillance studies has been slow
his seminal work on surveillance, did not mention computers at all, even though he
was writing in 1975 when computers were well established and GIS had existed for
about a decade (Foucault 1995; see also Foresman 1998b; Dobson and Durfee 1998).
recognize the special case of human-tracking systems (except for prisoners), even
when commercial products have been publicly sold and prominently advertised for
at least five years (2007). Our own articles have elicited a gratifying response from
many quarters, but not from within the very community most closely aligned with
the issues we have raised (Dobson and Fisher 2003, Fisher and Dobson 2003).
Such chronic inattention to technology, old or new, may result from the collec-
tive tendency, noted above, to view the Panopticon not as a concrete object but as a
metaphor for surveillance and associated power relationships. In so doing, the very
scholars most devoted to surveillance studies missed not only a new form of sur-
veillance but also crucial categories of power relationships newly enabled by GIS,
ployed that way as well, but its true innovation is to enable power relationships of
all sorts: spouse to spouse, employer to employee, parent to child, and untold oth-
ers, some of which may even be lateral. That yields a fertile new field for surveillance
studies that involve myriad power relationships, some of which may be equal or
nearly equal and others that may be newly unequal due to the availability of low-
cost, readily accessible, uncomplicated surveillance products. Now more than ever,
being watched relinquish power to the people they themselves may have hired to
watch them. Consider, for example, the case of an elderly person who hires a service
provider to monitor his or her movements for health reasons and whose watcher
ends up meddling in other aspects of his or her life. In the context of "imperfect
in its ability to observe, judge, and enforce more life paths, each of them more com-
As in Alcoholics Anonymous and similar support groups, the first step is to recog-
nize that we have a problem. Western societies are addicted to digital technology
and far more prone to recognize its benefits than its risks. Surely, it will clarify the
issues if we can agree that digital human tracking is indeed the third stage in a
progression that includes Bentham's Panopticon and Orwell's Big Brother. A straight-
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forward comparison of benefits, risks, and comparative advantages among the three
Panopticons should help resolve just how threatening this new technology really is.
Is Panopticon III really the greatest threat to personal freedom ever faced by
humankind, as we have said? Or, is it just another neutral technology like the com-
puter or cell phone or GIs per se, with irresistible virtues and chronic annoyances?
Is it first and foremost a civil rights issue? A women's rights issue? A children's
rights issue? Will it really change the fundamental nature of social relationships in
Next we must ask, how far down this path is the United States willing to go?
How far are Great Britain and other nations willing to go? Always, the trade-off is
between physical security and personal safety on one hand and privacy and per-
sonal freedom on the other (Dobson 1998). Surely some limit exists beyond which
society will say, "No more." Where is that limit? Will we wait and find it through
bitter experience or anticipate risks and avoid pain through shared values, social
On every front, philosophical quandaries of right and wrong will develop, fol-
* Do parents have unlimited rights to monitor their children, brand them, and
control their every movement? Under U.S., British, and international law,
similar distinction exist between implants that require incisions and brace-
* Do employers have an unlimited right to track workers on the job? Off the
job? Will the door to the room that houses the monitor be locked? Guarded?
How can voters, legislators, public officials, and businessmen distinguish between
right and wrong when the choices involve such complex technologies and diverse
social circumstances? In every instance it will help to ask ourselves what we would
have called its analog equivalent. What would it be if it were not electronic? Would
When judges mandate such devices, they routinely inform prisoners that they
are being "incarcerated" as surely as if they were confined within a cell block. Can
the act be anything but incarceration when one individual does it to another? Who
has the right to incarcerate? What legal proceeding or medical review would be
surely as if the same number had been tattooed on the skin? Who has the right to
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Many applications clearly would fit the standard definition of "stalking." Who
has the right to stalk, and who does not? Are current antistalking laws sufficient to
"Geofencing" has been used to describe electronic systems that confine people,
animals, or products within prescribed boundaries. Who has the right to fence a
Earlier, we used the term "geoslavery" to describe a new form of human bond-
that no one has the right to enslave another human being. Shouldn't that principle
Consider two very different visions of Digital Earth. The first is from a 1998 essay
Imagine a young child visiting a Digital Earth exhibit at a local museum. Donning a
head-mounted display, she sees Earth as it appears from space. Using a data glove,
she zooms in to see continents, countries, cities, houses, then trees. She takes a"magic
carpet ride" through the terrain. She requests information on land cover, plants,
animals, weather, roads, boundaries, and population. She visits Yellowstone Park's
geysers, bison, and bighorn sheep. She visits Paris, her time-line set for centuries to
learn French history or eons to learn about dinosaurs. (Gore 1998, 1-2)
It is a beautiful vision. We shared it then and still do now. But two years later
Dobson became embroiled in a controversy over human tracking that forced him
to consider the dark side as well. He wrote about that same girl's walk home that
afternoon:
Imagine a young girl walking home from school on a bright May day. She's brim-
ming with curiosity and energy and romance. Something in a nearby stream catches
her eye. Impulsively, she charges across the field. Suddenly, her biceps twitches, then
stings, then aches. She turns back, and her pain ceases at the sidewalk. Simultaneously,
a commercial service provider reports to her parents. Her father meets her at the
door and asks about the incident. He agrees the side trip would have been all right
and promises to program a digression into tomorrow's route, but the moment of
discovery has passed. Even so, this girl is fortunate, for her parents, at least, have
good intentions. One can easily imagine worse horrors in places where child slavery
is common or ethnic cleansing is under way. How long would Anne Frank's diary be,
Today both visions are close to reality. Millions of ordinary people routinely
geofencing has gone mainstream with corporate offerings by Sprint and Xora.
Schoolchildren in Osaka, Japan, are required to carry tracking devices tucked into
their belongings, and television advertisements for "kid trackers" air on U.S. televi-
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
sion. Surveillance technology has changed dramatically, and much of what is new
and GPS. The result, in turn, is a rapidly changing geography of surveillance and
control. Simply put, the price of surveillance and control per person and per area
has dropped precipitously, so that almost anyone can afford real-time applications
to watch and control almost anyone else. A grand social experiment has begun, and
Surveillance technology has advanced in three major spurts, each of which trig-
gered a new public episode. In the first instance the surveillance instrument was a
ing service. Functionally, each Panopticon was designed to provide total surveillance,
and each succeeded within the confines of its designated geographical coverage.
What have changed most dramatically through time are costs, geographical cover-
age, and benefits. With the advent of Panopticon III, costs have plummeted from
hundreds of thousands of dollars per watched person per year for analog surveil-
III is greater than that of Panopticon II (even in its modern ccTV form) and far
The end result is a fertile new field of investigation for surveillance studies in-
volving an endless variety of power relationships. With their high cost and commu-
investment and sanction. With its low cost and personal use, Panopticon III can
operate with as few as one inspector and one person watched. Thus surveillance
technology now supports myriad power relationships, some of them equal or nearly
Our literal, empirical approach to panopticism has yielded insights that might
have been less obvious under the metaphorical approach that has dominated recent
change arising from the Information Revolution. We urge public discourse and schol-
arly debate-local, national, and global-on this grand social experiment that has
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