The Geographical Review
VOLUME 97
-2007
NUMBER 3
THE PANOPTICON'S CHANGING GEOGRAPHY
JEROME E. DOBSON and PETER F. FISHER
ABSTRACT. Over the past two centuries, surveillance technology has advanced in three major 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
Brother; today, an electronic human-tracking service. Functionally, each technology provided total surveUlance 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
hundreds of dollars for electronic human-tracking systems. Simultaneously, benefits to those
being watched have increased enormously, so that individual and public resistence are minimized. The end result is a fertUe 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 metaphorical-are essential to understand what promises to be the greatest instrument of social
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 forethought. Keywords: geofencing, geoslavery, GIS, GPS, human tracking. Panopticon.
rr
X^or 220 years the Panopticon has stood as the tangible symbol of total surveillance, discipline, and control. Always it has been the Utopian dream of some and
hellish nightmare of others. Its initial, architectural manifestation was promoted
heavUy 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
viewed as shameless fearmongering. Today, a third manifestation is quietly making
a vigorous comeback—with little public reaction.
Since the mid-1970s, scholars of surveillance studies have insisted that the
Panopticon should be taken not literally but as a metaphor for surveillance of all
types, with emphasis on power relationships. In this article we revert to a literal
* ^ DR. DOBSON is a professor of geography at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 660457613. DR. FISHER is a research professor of geographical information at City University, London ECIV
OHB, England.
The Geographical Review gj (}): 307-323, July 2007
Copyright © 2007 by the American Geographical Society of New York
THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
interpretation and find it revealing. We examine the Panopticon's three physical
manifestations, focusing on changing costs, geographical coverage, and benefits.
Empirically, we find that surveillance technology has advanced in three major
spurts, each of which triggered a new episode. In the first instance the surveillance
instrument was a specially designed building; in the second, a tightly controlled
television network; and today, an electronic tracking service. Each had its own distinctive rationale: first the Utopian perfection of society; second, enforcement of
absolute tyranny; today, safety and security. Functionally, however, their root function is the same—total surveillance—and they are indeed three successive generations of Panopticons. We call them Panopticon I, II, and III.
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 "inspector" 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 "Elaboratory." His brother, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, wrote twenty-one letters promoting Samuel's invention as a technological fix for society: "Morals reformedhealth preserved—industry invigorated [—] instruction diffused—public burthens
lightened—Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock—the [C] ordian knot of the PoorLaws . . . untied—all by a simple idea in Architecture!" ([1787] i995> preface). He
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] i995> preface).
Thirty years ago the philosopher/historian Michel Foucault called it "a cruel,
ingenious cage" (1995, 207). He viewed it as an instrument for enforcing discipline
and punishment and a means of defining power relations in everyday lives.
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 Petersburg, Russia (constructed in 1806), designed by Samuel Bentham. Certain aspects
of his design were incorporated into many prisons around the world, including
England's Millbank Penitentiary (1821) and the Virginia State Penitentiary (1800).
In Pennsylvania the Western Penitentiary, near Pittsburgh (1826), adhered closely to
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
its day (Teeters and Shearer 1957; Johnston 1994)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 ([1949] i95o). He called
PANOPTICON S CHANGING GEOGRAPHY
3O9
it "Big Brother" and indelibly cast it as an enabling technology for totalitarian government. In popular culture it was associated almost exclusively with communism.
Orwell's vision incited fear, and the term itself became a rallying cry for those who
opposed surveillance of any sort, but especially surveillance as an instrument of
tyranny.
Today, alert citizens or visitors in certain countries quickly realize that Panopticon
II is well advanced. The use of closed-circuit television (CCTV) to monitor public
spaces is widespread, especially in Great Britain. Estimates of the number of times
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 welcomed by the local community because they are perceived as a deterrent to crime.
For example, pedestrians in Middlesbrough, England, are watched continuously
and scolded from loudspeakers for infractions as minor as dropping a piece of paper on the sidewalk. Other cities are following Middlesbrough's lead.
PANOPTICON III
Recently, Bentham's Panopticon has become a catchphrase for all sorts of electronic
surveillance, from video coverage of city streets to "total information awareness" of
library checkouts and credit-card transactions. This modern Panopticon is a serviceable umbrella for what John Pickles called "the surveillant society" (1991,1995),
what Daniel Sui dubs "the stolen geography" (2006), and what Harlan Onsrud labeled "the tragedy of the information commons" (1998). Its closest kin, however, is
"human-tracking systems," a new category of surveillance technologies based on
geographic information systems (GIS), the Global Positioning System (GPS), and
two-way radio transmission (Weaver 2006).
Human tracking is a growing component of a larger industry called "locationbased 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
transit. Goods normally do not arouse controversy, but sometimes it is difficult to
distinguish goods from people, as when the product is clothing or when vehicles
are tracked and their drivers and occupants are known.
Several technologies are available for human tracking. A GPS receiver can locate
itself by triangulating from several satellites. It can be worn as a bracelet or installed
in a cell phone. Coordinates are calculated by the device itself and sent via radio, cell
phone, or other wireless transmitter to a service provider. Alternatively, the device
can be a radio transmitter whose signal is located by triangulating from two or
more receivers. These devices, usually called "radio-frequency identification tags"
(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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THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
ergy actively sent by the detector, whose receiver waits for an answer. Location is
determined not by triangulation but simply by proximity to the detector, whose
location is already known.
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 results 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 receiver inside each cell phone, so that configuration is preferred.
Similarly, any laptop computer logged into a wireless network necessarily sends
a radio signal that can be triangulated among several wireless antennas. One vendor, 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
track legitimate users as well.
Regardless of how they are obtained, latitude, longitude, and (optionally) elevation coordinates are then transmitted to a central monitor run by a service
provider. Frequent updates are fed into a GIS containing location and descriptive
data for geographical features (buildings, streets, administrative boundaries, terrain, and much more) plus software and models to enforce any spatial and temporal 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
restricted to paying customers, each of whom is analogous to one of Bentham's
inspectors.
Jerome Dobson first glimpsed human-tracking systems in 1999 while working
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. No commercial products were advertised for
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
bondage based on location control. He called it "geoslavery" (Dobson 2002, 2003,
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
seem accusatory if charged by anyone outside the industry.
To be clear, not all human tracking is geoslavery. Bloggers, newspaper reporters,
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
2003. He defines it as a master exerting control over a worker through human-tracking" (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 (Dobson 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
PANOPTICON S CHANGING GEOGRAPHY
3II
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 reasonably strong argument can be made that Congress does have the constitutional power
under the remedial provision ofthe Thirteenth Amendment to ban the use of tracking 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" (2006, 429). Herbert is employed by the Civil Service Employees Association Local 1000 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the largest union in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of
Industrial Organizations, and he leaves no doubt that his statement appUes to human 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,
in a quantity hitherto without example" ([1787] 1995, preface).
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, absolute control over human actions was an express purpose ofthe proposed surveillance. Both were designed solely as instruments of government or commerce that
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
"democratically controlled" (1995, 209). In this particular paragraph it is not clear
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 outside" does not guarantee that authorities will welcome outsiders as fellow inspectors in the tower (p. 209). Indeed, the premise clearly does not hold today, when a
fundamental provision of many surveillance systems, deemed essential to protect
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 individuals, is that the principle of open government clashes with the right to privacy whenever personal information is collected and held by government. The conundrum is
even greater when personal information is held by corporations. In fact, governments may not be the primary threat but, rather, corporations and individuals, not
just one "Big Brother" but many overbearing "Little Brothers."
Today Panopticons II and III are promoted mainly as a means of enhancing
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 implementation of CCTV schemes. Some investigators have concluded that CCTV is unlikely to
be effective in preventing or solving crime, or even in reducing the fear of crime
(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
themselves committing crimes.
Unlike the oppressive government of Orwell's vision, the British government is
not advancing the use of CCTV to control activities in private space. The installation of CCTV to monitor private space by individuals is on the increase, however,
purportedly to protect their own property or to monitor their nannies, for instance.
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
and Hermant's oligopticon is focused, whereas Bentham's Panopticon is synoptic.
"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
commercial or government inspectors.
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 temptation to influence the subjects' actions to one degree or another.
COSTS
In Table I we summarize the characteristics of Bentham's original Panopticon,
Orwell's Big Brother, and Gis-based human-tracking systems. We focus on geographical coverages, costs, and benefits, starting here with 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
true Panopticon was ever built.
Panopticon II is less expensive to construct than is Bentham's building, but labor costs remain high. If countrywide implementation of Orwell's vision were desired, it would be inhibited by the number of personnel required to monitor CCTV
full time. On the other hand, major strides are being made in automated recogni-
PANOPTICONS CHANGING GEOGRAPHY
313
TABLE I—COMPARISON OF COSTS, GEOGRAPHICAL COVERAGES, AND BENEFITS OF
PANOPTICONS I, II, AND III
COST TO THE WATCHER
MEANS OF
SURVEILLANCE
Initial
Purchase or
Construction
Cost
per Person
BENEFITS
Operating
Gost per
Person
per Year
GEOGRAPHICAL
COVERAGE
To the To the
Watcher Watched
Analog:
Spies or private
investigators
Panopticon I:
Jeremy Bentham's
original
panopticon
Panopticon II:
George Orwell's
Big Brother
$1,000-$5,000
(retainer)"
$350,000»
Unlimited
Many
None
$125,000''
$22,600':
Inside a
special
building
Many
None
$7.88''
$14,000^
Extent of
television
cables
Many
None
Panopticon III:
Human-tracking
systems
$200
$240
Extent of
cell-phone
towers
Many
Many
^ 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.
Based on the cost of construction per bed for a high-security prison (level 4). Source: CTDOC 2001.
'^ "The average annual operating cost per State inmate in 2001 was $22,650, or $62.05 per day. Among
facilities operated by the Eederal Bureau of Prisons, it was $22,632 per inmate, or $62.01 per day" (James
2004,1).
Initial installation of surveillance systems, including cameras, communications networks, and
monitors, runs approximately $50o-$i,ooo 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 residential densities of 25,000 per square mile, the cost of installation runs $7.88 per person. Sources: Galculated by the author from surveillance equipment costs and speciffications found online at numerous
Web sites on 24 September 2007.
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 individual, and a spatial dossier of the person's movements can be composed in real
time. Another problem unforeseen by Orwell is that monitoring is difficult to maintain when the watched moves from the range on one sensor (camera) into the range
of a number of other possible sensors. GIS, of course, is capable of making such
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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THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
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
more expensive, amounting to substantial salaries for a minimum of seven watchers (say, $350,000 per year) (see Table I). Plus, surveillance on the move or even in
fixed buildings other than prisons is highly fallible.
In comparison. Panopticon III is affordable, effective, and available to anyone
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, employee, neighbor, or stranger.
GEOGRAPHICAL COVERAGE
One serious limitation of Panopticon I was that it could only be deployed, as Bentham
admitted, "within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings"
([1787] 1995, 207). In spite of his clear statement, later commentators have transposed Bentham's building into a metaphor for surveillance of all forms. Lila Kalinich,
for instance, wrote, "Eoucault takes care to remind us not to take this model too
concretely" (2000,157). Bentham's optical system, designed to exercise power through
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
likewise in the future.
In retrospect, that pure architectural manifestation of Panopticon I failed because 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 limitation of Panopticon I by relying not on mirrors and walls but on television cameras that could be deployed wherever cables could be run.
A common limitation of Panopticons I and II is that they arefixedor stationary,
though the latter far exceeds the former. Panopticon III is not confined to government, as the others usually were, and is mobile by definition. It is as if Bentham's
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 reception that surround them. Jeremy Bentham would applaud, though Samuel, the
architect, might be out of a job.
PANOPTICON S CHANGING GEOGRAPHY
315
BENEFITS VERSUS RISKS
The Bentham brothers viewed their invention in a totally positive light and promoted 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 ([1949] 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 addressing their fear of crime (whether it actually addresses crime or not).
In contrast. Panopticon III is seductive. To latter-day Benthams it is less confining, less visible, and therefore less frightening than its predecessors. The overwhelming 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 watchfiil 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 internationally ubiquitous fashion accessory at the start of the twenty-first century.
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
is being collected on the majority of the population of whole countries as part of
the billing information recorded at the time of each mobile telephone call. More
overt monitoring of workers is performed by digital human-tracking systems, and
these are applied to more people than all the inmates who ever spent time in buildings modeled after Bentham's original Panopticon. The Xora company alone claims
to track 50,000 American workers in 4,500 companies. Latter-day Orwells found
little comfort when Xora's chief executive officer, Sanjay Shirole, publicly announced,
"There's no electro shock . . . yet" (quoted in Charney 2004).
Today's advertisements for Panopticon III are eerily reminiscent of Bentham's
promotional hype. The title page of his collected letters proclaimed the invention as
"Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in Which Persons of Any Description Are
to Be Kept under Inspection; And in Particular to Penitentiary-houses, Prisons,
Houses of Industry, Work-houses, Poor-houses, Lazarettos, Manufactories, Hospitals, Mad-houses, and Schools" ([1787] 1995). In his first letter, he elaborated re-
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THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
garding its purpose: "Whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the
insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of industry, 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 confinement before trial" (letter I).
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, however, 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 smoking. 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.
Ceoslavery 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
over their own children—Panopticon III fundamentally changes the parent-child
relationship. It will do the same for teachers and students, husbands and wives,
employers and employees, and countless other social contracts. Imagine, for instance, a generation of children who cannot disobey and workers who cannot break
a rule regarding location. Imagine high-school sweethearts exchanging human-tracking 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 relationship is no longer exclusive.
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
only thing lacking . . . is freedom" (engraved on a memorial wall of the Dwight
D. Eisenhower Presidential Center in Abilene, Kansas).
A prime example of both sides—risks and benefits—appeared in a story that made
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
reject Panopticon III, and human tracking would be outlawed altogether.
ORWELL'S WOLF
By any reasonable measure. Panopticon III is bound to have an impact on society
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-
PANOPTICONS CHANGING GEOGRAPHY
3I7
sion. No State or federal law has been modified to regulate their use. In 2001, Senator
John Edwards (Democrat, North Carolina) introduced a Location Privacy Protection Act, but it went nowhere in Gongress and did not become an issue in his subsequent campaigns. Recently, France passed a law that requires employers to notify
employees when they are being tracked but does not outlaw the practice.
Why so little interest? It may be due in part to Orwell's over-the-top success in
"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 instrument 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
Mclntyre 2005). Actually, the biblical text explicitly addresses branding for identification, 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, navigation, security, crime investigation, tax collection, transportation, and countless other
aspects of ordinary life. Panopticon III is just one facet of a societal revolution that
is profoundly changing just about everything that involves location, movement, or
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. Gell-phone tracking is a
staple of forensic crime shows, but few viewers understand how it will impact ordinary, law-abiding citizens. Most people do not even know the acronym "GIS," much
less the full term "geographic information system." Still fewer understand that geography is the science behind it.
Now, many nations have entered a social revolution as momentous as any in
their past and yet so insidious that hardly anyone seems to notice. Panopticon III is
a grand social experiment undertaken without forethought. Where, for instance,
are studies by child psychologists investigating how children wifl react, emotionally
and behaviorally, to constant surveillance and control?
Technology always changes dynamically through complex relationships and interactions among culture and other technologies. Francis Harvey and Nicholas
Ghrisman describe the "rhizomatic network" of GIS development since the 1950s
(2004); Timothy Foresman refers to the "geomander" of institutions and individuals who pioneered GIS and its precursors over a century and more (1998a). Technology, like culture itself, changes in unpredictable and uncontroUable ways, always
interwoven with science and society. Introspective probes into the history and phi-
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losophy of GIS—such as those by Timothy Foresman (1998b), Francis Harvey and
Nicholas Chrisman (2004), Duane Marble (1990), and Daniel Sui and Matt Ball
(2006)—are rare, and they are needed now more than ever, especially for understanding Panopticon III.
Oddly, the community of scholars devoted to surveillance studies has been slow
to recognize the technological descendants of Bentham's Panopticon. Foucault, in
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).
Commenting on Foucault's digital deficiency, David Murakami Wood still fails to
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 collective 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 surveillance but also crucial categories of power relationships newly enabled by GIS,
GPS, and human-tracking products. Panopticons I and II were inherently vertical,
top-down, hierarchical, internally connected networks. Panopticon III can be employed 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 others, some of which may even be lateral. That yields a fertile newfieldfor 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 lowcost, readily accessible, uncomplicated surveillance products. Now more than ever,
it is possible for power relationships to work in reverse, as when the individuals
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
panopticism" (Hannah 1997), Panopticon III lurches toward perfection as it gains
in its ability to observe, judge, and enforce more life paths, each of them more completely, in time and space (Pred 1977; Hannah 1997).
A FRAMEWORK FOR LOCAL, NATIONAL, AND GLOBAL DEBATES
As in Alcoholics Anonymous and similar support groups, the first step is to recognize 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-
PANOPTICONS CHANGING GEOGRAPHY
319
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 computer 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
ways that even its proponents will come to find repugnant?
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 personal 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
conventions, laws, and regulations? (Herbert 2006).
On every front, philosophical quandaries of right and wrong will develop, followed by scores of specific questions:
• Do parents have unlimited rights to monitor their children, brand them, and
control their every movement? Under U.S., British, and international law,
branding is allowed as long it is not implemented with a hot iron. Should a
similar distinction exist between implants that require incisions and bracelets that do not?
• Should service providers be required to conduct background checks of employees as day-care centers are required to do?
• How will service providers secure the data against hacking?
• 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?
Or open to any coworker who happens to stroll by?
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
it be incarceration? Tethering? Branding? Stalking? Slavery?
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. Gan
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
required if it were not electronic?
Similarly, if an RFID is implanted beneath the skin, is that not "branding" as
surely as if the same number had been tattooed on the skin? Who has the right to
brand, and who does not?
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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
address electronic stalking?
"Geofencing" has been used to describe electronic systems that confine people,
animals, or products within prescribed boundaries. Who has the right to fence a
fellow human, and who does not?
Earlier, we used the term "geoslavery" to describe a new form of human bondage characterized by electronic location control imposed coercively or surreptitiously.
International conventions on slavery, to which most countries are signatories, state
that no one has the right to enslave another human being. Shouldn't that principle
govern all forms of slavery, electronic or not?
VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
Consider two very different visions of Digital Earth. The first is from a 1998 essay
attributed to Vice President Albert Gore:
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 brimming with curiosity and energy and romance. Something in a nearby stream catches
her eye. Impulsively, she charges across thefield.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,
if she had been wearing such a device? (Dobson 2000, 24)
Today both visions are close to reality. Millions of ordinary people routinely
view the spinning Earth through Google Earth or ArcExplorer. Simultaneously,
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-
PANOPTICON S CHANGING GEOGRAPHY
32I
sion. Surveillance technology has changed dramatically, and much of what is new
derives specifically from advancements of geographical technology, including GIS
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
no one knows how far it will go.
SURVEILLANCE FOR THE MASSES
Surveillance technology has advanced in three major spurts, each of which triggered a new public episode. 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 Brother; today, an electronic human-tracking 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 coverage, and benefits. With the advent of Panopticon III, costs have plummeted fi-om
hundreds of thousands of dollars per watched person per year for analog surveillance or tens of thousands of dollars for incarceration to mere hundreds of dollars
for electronic human-tracking systems. Simultaneously, benefits to those being
watched have increased enormously, so that individual and collective resistence—
Foucault's "political costs"—are minimized. Hence, the public appeal of Panopticon
III is greater than that of Panopticon II (even in its modern CCTV form) and far
greater than that of Panopticon I.
The end result is a fertile new field of investigation for surveillance studies involving an endless variety of power relationships. With their high cost and communal nature. Panopticons I and II required government, corporate, or institutional
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
equal and others newly unequal.
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 metaphoricalare essential to understand what promises to be the greatest instrument of social
change arising from the Information Revolution. We urge public discourse and scholarly debate—local, national, and global—on this grand social experiment that has
already begun without forethought.
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