Surveillance is a term that is used very liberally in today’s society. Most people do not fully understand the extent in which surveillance by the government or private corporations affect even the most simple of tasks in the average person’s life. Gradually, day-byday the American public is being shifted to a life full of suspect in the attempt to turn the middle class into a class composed of docile bodies.
Surveillance is a necessary part of life to maintain some of the rights Americans have fought so hard to obtain, however it hardly seems fair or necessary to do it in an extreme way.

Surveillance as a general term generates negative stereotypes towards people under the surveillance.
The two most common and literal definitions of surveillance are


“a watch kept over a person, group, etc., especially over a suspect, prisoner, or the like” and
“ Close observation of a person or group, especially one under suspicion.”

A man named Jeremy Bentham developed a method of surveillance in the 1700’s.
He developed the idea for prison surveillance called the panopticon effect.
The basis for a successful panopticon effect is surveillance by instilling fear into those being watched even though they may not be.
The panopticon is derived from a method of watching prisoners in which a watch tower was placed in the middle of the prison and the inmates never knew whether they were being watched or not. The guards could see them yet they could not see the guards. This was a very effective method and is used very much today. The panopticon effect is a very efficient and economical method of surveillance.
The level of surveillance that a person needs to endure in their lives is directly related to their economic standing in society.

Whether it is by the government or an employer the amount of surveillance on a person is determined inversely to that of their economic standing.
The poorest are watched the most as the richest are watched the least. While the wealthy are still under some form of surveillance other wealthy people are controlling it.
The idea of the wealthy monitoring the wealthy does not seem fair, as the poor to middles class are not responsible for regulating one another. Even though we have a representative government it is only the wealthy that have the resources to be able to be in a position to make these changes. The basis of this problem is that there is less democratization of power.

The idea of leaky containers describes the methods of surveillance as the containers and how the information obtained is not always used only for the stated purposes.
In “Surveillance Society” by D. Lyons in reference to different entities within the government or a private company he states:
“What went on in one sector seldom affected another. The surveillance containers were pretty well sealed. The situation today is changing as those containers become more leaky. Surveillance practices and flows of data move much more freely between one sector and another. What happens in one area has implications on another”
(Lyons 37)
This is the case especially for the lower class workers where information is all pooled together, yet is only accessible by upper class.
The government is a very good example as well. When a person files their taxes with the IRS the information is not kept to only the IRS, but other departments such as homeland security or department of defense can reference all of the information. Law enforcement such as the FBI or CIA have unlimited capabilities to view any information that may have been submitted to the government.

As the average person who goes to work many do not realize that their every move can be and probably is being monitored. Many people do not realize that a company has the power to monitor e-mail, phone calls, and even keystrokes to see not only what a person is typing but to make sure they are typing a proper number of words per minute.
Microsoft has recently developed software that can scan and observe the eye movements and pupil dilations of a worker while they are at the computer to see if they are truly working or if they are doing something non-work related.
While any person should agree that some sort of monitoring of workers must take place to ensure a productive workforce it begs the question of does the economical cost of these technologies plus the loss of privacy and basic freedoms equal the amount of money lost by unproductive workers.

In closing, surveillance technologies are becoming more and more accepted and are widening the net of social control in the American society.
Through the discussion of surveillance we can conclude that although surveillance technologies are aimed at the deviant.
Our society is developing into what Staples calls a
‘risk’ society. Research has shown that workers are not only being monitored for productivity in the workplace, but as potential thieves. In this way, surveillance and discipline have become oddly democratic; “everyone is watched and no one is trusted” (Staples, 2000)