June 5, 2013 marks the beginning of the ‘Snowden’ leaks and a new era in the modern consciousness. Working together with Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian, Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA, revealed to the world the depth, range, and accuracy of the NSA’s surveillance techniques. To many, these revelations were shocking; to others, expected. Snowden himself came to be viewed as a hero and torch-bearer for liberty by some; as a traitor and detriment to America’s safety by others. However, regardless of one’s political or ethical view, Snowden made it clear to the world that we are being watched.

The question then arises, what does it mean to be watched? How does the modern surveillance-state that we live in affect oneself? Does it mean anything for the average citizen, who has never broken a law in his life, to be watched? Perhaps, for the individual answering these questions, the NSA’s all-encompassing surveillance seems irrelevant to his life. But, to truly understand the political and social repercussions of such surveillance, it is necessary to look at a much broader picture than that of the individual. One must move from the portrait to the mural to answer the question that the ‘Snowden’ leaks pose: What does it mean to be watched?

In 1975, French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison was published. The book functions both as a history of the prison and social critique. Foucault himself describes it as an attempt at a “correlative history of the modern soul and of a new power to judge”, or, more accurately, “a genealogy of the present scientifico-legal complex from which the power to punish derives its bases, justifications and rules, from which it extends its effects and by which it masks it exorbitant singularity.” Despite its age, the book serves as a salient comment on the current surveillance state in which we live. A multitude of articles have been devoted to comparisons between George Orwell’s 1984 and this new world revealed by the ‘Snowden’ leaks, but it is of my opinion that Foucault’s Discipline and Punish serves as a more prescient work in relation to the NSA’s massive, blank stare.

Discipline and Punish opens with a comparison between Robert-Francois Damiens punishment for his attempted regicide in 1757 and Léon Faucher’s De la réforme des prisons from 1838. Damiens’ punishment consisted of flesh being torn from his body, molten lead and burning sulphur poured on areas where flesh was removed, being drawn and quartered, and, finally, being burnt to ashes. Faucher presents a more subtle approach to punishment. He recommends a strict schedule of work, school, prayer, and rest. In 80 years, punishment for crimes progressed from the appalling execution of Damiens to the ascetic lifestyle prescribed by Faucher.

How was such a drastic change in the manner of thinking about penalty accomplished in such a short period of time? Foucault explains that while there was a humanitarian aspect involved in the Reform movement, there were other social, economic and judicial factors involved as well. First, public executions had the tendency to glorify the criminal and give cause to disturbances at the execution. If the people felt that someone was being killed unjustly, they may form a riot and try to save him; or worse, they may recognize their struggle against the monarchy in the metaphor of the executioner and the criminal. There was also an economic reason for the shift in mentality. With the beginning of the industrial age, society was better able to acquire and maintain capital. In a Capitalist state, one might easily deduce that kapital is the most important aspect of society [1].Therefore, there is a need to protect it. So, police forces grew and “prevented the development of organized, open criminality, [and] shifted it towards more discreet forms…” Violent crime reduced drastically, but petty larceny was rampant. There was a flood of new cases that overwhelmed the court houses and led to the general belief that morals were declining and crime was everywhere. A new system of punishment needed to be created in order to deal with this rise in crime and try to prevent it from growing any further. Finally, the judiciary system before the time of the prison reformers was practically unnavigable. Lower jurisdictions, the prosecution, judges, royal magistrates, and the king all had too much power. There was a “badly regulated distribution of power” that led to severe overlap and confusion.

A system of representations was the idea that prison reformers came up with in the early 19th century. They believed that the punishment should fit the crime, in a very Dante-esque fashion. “Speculation and usury will be punished by fines; theft will be punished by confiscation; ‘vainglory’ by humiliation; murder by death; fire-raising by the stake.” Further, the laws and the punishment for breaking those laws needed to be made known to everyone. Ideally, there would be a direct link in the individual mind between committing a crime and its punishment. To strengthen this link, the punishment had to be visible. Chain gangs and areas specifically designed for criminals around the city had to be organized and costumes depicting the criminal’s offense had to be created. Lastly, the punishment must be custom-tailored to every individual and the crime they commit. For example, if a corrupt, greedy, terrible bank executive tells his employees to target low-income families for sub-prime housing loans and causes the economy to collapse, he will be punished much more severely than a teenager that steals a package of cigarillos from a gas station. “One sought to constitute a Linnaeus of crimes and punishments, so that each particular offense and each punishable individual might come, without the slightest risk of any arbitrary action within the provisions of general law.” A genealogy of crime had to be invented so that crime could be punished justly, and prevent animosity towards law enforcement.

It is here that we first see a shift from the punishment of the body to the punishment of the human soul. With the genealogy of crime that was being created by the judicial powers, a sort of human science had to be developed in order to categorize him correctly. The question was no longer a binary matter of whether or not the law had been broken. Rather, a person’s life, his soul, his behavior, his likes, his dislikes, his anomalies were all on trial. This body-soul shift in penalty forms the basis of Foucault’s argument and gives way to a social critique based around the concept of discipline.

Despite the arguments of the reformers, their system of representational punishment was not adopted. In its stead, a much more comprehensive system was developed for not only prisons but society in general. This new system was and still is based around Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon is a circular building with an observation tower in the middle. Cells line the circumference of the building and have openings at the front (facing towards the central tower) and at the back. The individual inside is completely isolated from those around him. He has no ability to see those in the central tower (his superiors), yet they can observe him clearly. The Panopticon allows complete knowledge without ever having to make oneself known. It requires minimal effort: those under observation believe that they are always so, and in a way discipline themselves based only on the knowledge that they are potentially being watched.

The concept of the Panopticon, Foucault argues, was not only used as a model for reforming prisons, but also for reforming hospitals, barracks, factories, schoolhouses: the city in its entirety. The disciplinary techniques created by Bentham spread throughout society rapidly. It’s principal object was to make docile but economic humans. A group that could be controlled without the thought of rebellion. A society in which eyes are always upon them, and, should they make the decision to misbehave, their souls will be punished rather than their body. The penal system changed from an institution created to revenge wrongs done to the crown (torture) to a system with the object of detailed surveillance so that one might gain knowledge of an individual and therefore gain power over him.

Foucault argues that this is all part of a class struggle. The bourgeois and the proletariat both have their illegalities (the bourgeois have tax evasion, while the proletariat have petty larceny), however the people enforcing the laws are also the same people that made them. There is an inherent contradiction in that relationship according to Foucault. He believes that the modern ‘carceral’ system is a subtle, yet overwhelming way in which the bourgeois can maintain power over the proletariat while keeping them docile. It is a machine whose function is to create modality. One aspect of this carceral system is the invention of the modern delinquent. Furthering the idea that it is no longer the body that is punished but the human soul, Foucault argues that once an individual does misbehave and breaks the social code as created by the bourgeois, he is labeled as a delinquent. This labeling will then affect every aspect of life once he is released from prison. Part of the Panopticon society, is keeping records of behavior: criminal records, medical records, work history, education, etc. So, (much like the cycle that modern prisoners face today once they are labeled as ‘felons’) jobs were more difficult to come by, one had law enforcement keeping tabs on him, rumors spread, and before one is aware of what has happened he is in a dire situation in which his only option is to break the law once more in order to survive. This continuous cycle of prison and desperation has been a facet of the carceral system since its birth, Foucault argues.

Returning to the concept of the Panopticon, one can easily see a direct connection between its design and that of the NSA. To see without being seen. To discipline without actively disciplining. To know movements. To detect anomalies. The NSA’s surveillance techniques seem to be the logical conclusion of the Panopticon-society. It possesses knowledge of everyone’s behavior, everyone’s acquaintances, everyone’s daily routine, everyone’s soul. With the explosion of the technological age, the Panoptical system has also been freed from its geographical, intelligence-gathering, and modality-inducing restraints. Perhaps Edward Snowden has revealed to us the existence of God through the NSA leaks. We now know of an entity that is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.

What is most astounding about the development of the NSA is the almost simultaneous advent of social networks. It is now normal to reveal all of one’s doings on an easily accessible platform. As surveillance techniques became more refined and efficient, public display of one’s self became vogue. Further, social networks tend to be modality-inducing machines. We customize photos and statuses to receive the maximum amount of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’. We unconsciously conform with every piece of information we post on social networks. In this manner, the NSA and social networks have formed an almost perfect Panoptical society: we discipline our behavior in relation to the law through the knowledge that we are being watched by a judicial machine, and we discipline our behavior in relation to the society through the knowledge that all of our ‘friends’ are watching.

So, what does it mean to be watched? Discipline and Punish tells us it means that we are being controlled in order to acquiesce the desires of the bourgeois. But, perhaps it means more than that. Maybe it means that we are slowly losing our freedom. Our freedom which arose from progressively more rational nations and men building off those that came before them. Maybe it means we’re losing the very ground that was so hard won. Foucault only briefly addresses the issue of diminishing freedom in his work, which is something that I believe necessarily occurs as surveillance increases. As Foucault points out, being watched compels one to discipline oneself, and thus our freedom to do as we please diminishes. Our desire to have creative thought, to rebel, and to be different slowly evaporates as we come to realize that we are being observed. Something in our nature seems to tell us to transform into a docile animal when others are watching. Having every moment in our lives recorded is at once an incredible and terrible thing. How are we possibly to deal with this knowledge? Any type of resistance seems futile or melodramatic. Maybe there is no choice whatsoever. People have had their soul on a metaphysical trial since the birth of the idea of god after-all. We are simply having to deal with the physical representation of that idea. The same advice from ages ago still applies today: Cave, cave, Deus videt.

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[1] I’m simply referring to kapital being the root word of Capitalist. An in depth explanation of the importance of capital would more than likely become redundant, nor would it serve any real purpose in this article.