Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO PRIVACY AND TECHNOLOGY
- 3 A World of Strong Privacy
- 4 Information Processing: Threat or Menace? Or If Information Is Property, Who Owns It?
- 5 Surveillance Technology: The Universal Panopticon
- PART THREE DOING BUSINESS ONLINE
- PART FOUR CRIME AND CONTROL
- PART FIVE BIOTECHNOLOGIES
- PART SIX THE REAL SCIENCE FICTION
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Surveillance Technology: The Universal Panopticon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO PRIVACY AND TECHNOLOGY
- 3 A World of Strong Privacy
- 4 Information Processing: Threat or Menace? Or If Information Is Property, Who Owns It?
- 5 Surveillance Technology: The Universal Panopticon
- PART THREE DOING BUSINESS ONLINE
- PART FOUR CRIME AND CONTROL
- PART FIVE BIOTECHNOLOGIES
- PART SIX THE REAL SCIENCE FICTION
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The trend began in Britain a decade ago, in the city of King's Lynn, where sixty remote controlled video cameras were installed to scan known “trouble spots,” reporting directly to police headquarters. The resulting reduction in street crime exceeded all predictions; in or near zones covered by surveillance, it dropped to one seventieth of the former amount. The savings in patrol costs alone paid for the equipment in a few months. Dozens of cities and towns soon followed the example of King's Lynn. Glasgow, Scotland reported a 68% drop in citywide crime, while police in Newcastle fingered over 1500 perpetrators with taped evidence. (All but seven pleaded guilty, and those seven were later convicted.) In May 1997, a thousand Newcastle soccer fans rampaged through downtown streets. Detectives studying the video reels picked out 152 faces and published eighty photos in local newspapers. In days, all were identified.
David Brin, The Transparent Society, chapter 1, p. 5In the early nineteenth century, Jeremy Bentham, one of the oddest and most original of English thinkers, designed a prison where every prisoner could be watched at all times. He called it the Panopticon. Elements of his design were later implemented in real prisons in the hope of better controlling and reforming prisoners. If Brin is correct, it is now in the process of being implemented on a somewhat larger scale.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Future ImperfectTechnology and Freedom in an Uncertain World, pp. 66 - 80Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008