The Persistent Panopticon
Based on the ever-encroaching surveillance systems used by local and national governments and private organizations one has to wonder if we — the presumed innocent — are living inside or outside a prison facility. Advances in security and surveillance systems now make it possible to track swathes of the population over periods of time across an entire city. From the Washington Post: Shooter and victim were just a pair of pixels, dark specks on a gray streetscape. Hair color, bullet wounds, even the weapon were not visible in the series of pictures taken from an airplane flying two miles above. But what the images revealed — to a degree impossible just a few years ago — was location, mapped over time. Second by second, they showed a gang assembling, blocking…