Our phones are continuously leaking data about who we are, where we are, what we read, what we buy, and a lot more. The data is being collected with and without our consent. It is sold for profit; more dangerously it can be used to modify our behaviour.

The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham and brought to wider attention by Michel Foucault. The design of the panopticon allows all prisoners to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched.

We live in a world that is overwhelmed by digital technologies that thrive only on personal data. This data is being extracted from us and processed, relentlessly by private companies, state agencies, and in public spaces, sometimes coercively and often without consent. Some specific data may be needed, for genuine reasons, by government agencies or private entities to provide a specific service. But the amount of data that is being taken is humungous and goes far, far beyond the routine.

The threats arising from this are not merely about the embarrassment that may be caused by some intimate details of our lives becoming public but that the extracted data can be used to manipulate and control us. In more harrowing situations it may lead to being discriminated against and be hounded by state agencies. The greatest threat is to our ‘free will’ and political freedoms, of expression and to dissent. Read More

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