“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

Here’s a compilation of UK news items about the widening use of surveillance technologies. As technologies become available, pressure mounts to use them ever more widely. There’s a trend to target schoolchildren with biometrics. Get them young, get them for life.

Surveillance technologies and the electronic panopticon

Jeremy Bentham developed a prison design he called the “Panopticon”. It had a central tower for the jailers, with a circular building around it divided into cells. The guards could see the cells without being seen. The inmates could not know when, or whether, they were being watched. There’s a metaphor there somewhere.