A question of freedom and privacy

According to Jeremy Bentham, he had developed “ A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.” Two centuries ago, he placed one unseen man in a tower to watch people. The people being watched, knowing they were being observed, began to behave differently.

Those who were watched became more restricted, the constant watch affecting them. They regulated their behavior.

Today, we are watched.

A gas station example, where shadows hang over the tarmac, speakers communicate and cameras gauge behavior is an example. Cameras hang across the canopy and on the lot. People behave without emotion or communication, sensitive to the dozen lenses.

The cashier accesses with her screen. A tape of the shift provides a history of behavior. The cameras cover their half acre with an invasion, watching us pump the gas, standing like the hapless and oblivious customers that we are.

Has personal space ended in our public shopping? Has constricted behavior followed the multitude of spying lenses? If you know someone is watching, are you affected?

Research has pointed to change in how we treat each other since industry and technology have gained access to our lives. After cities grew we began to look away from each other. Today camera and tech looms across the landscape of our lives.

For many years we have been told life is always better with science. Science brought ease and time savings. The tractor and combine operate with satellite instructions. Of course, being watched?

Still, questions about freedoms being invaded matter in every case. Our personal space may no longer be ours, intimate space once thought inviolable is being watched and recorded.

Are we lured to accept being watched in this age that spins so fast we do not see it? Hasn't privacy been an ancient ethic that each of us, unless we are imprisoned, has the right to have? The right to our personhood?

Changes in trust, in our independence and freedoms have been consequential in this time of technology.

In the city, dare not look in the stranger’s eye. The city holds shadows and potential harm, its very size an impediment to interaction. Is safety there with a camera watching?

In small towns, we know our neighbors. We make eye contact. We wave howdy on the two lane.

Today, attached to the stop light, four to 10 cameras hover in the sky. Some look like long necked birds, some like white turtles. Each points its lens at different heights and directions. Down the street the ATM whirls a camera across the walkway.

At the library, the camera positions its watch at aisle ends or at doors near the buzzer that screams when it senses the book wasn’t checked out. The stores watch. The schools watch.

Has the culture claimed its prey? Has everyone been offered to the lens of anonymous watchmen, each of us a victim of technology?

Freedom from intrusion became a thorny issue two centuries ago, in 1830, when “The Rationale of Punishment” was published. In the book, Jeremy Bentham described a prison called the Panopticon. His building housed prisoners in a round tower with a single guard set in the middle in a smaller tower, able to watch everyone. As no one knew when they were being watched, they modified their behavior.

Today, look closely at the cameras but be careful, the person on the other end of the camera is not your neighbor.

Tim Trenkle is a teacher and writer from Dubuque.