Panopticon in the 21st Century

Huntsville (Ala.)

Surveillance has been considered an effective technique for detection and deterrence of wrongdoings by rogue entities in our society. However, the mechanism comes with a price – reduced level of privacy and trust. It also raises ethical issues regarding its deployment and use. In this paper, we present the impact of surveillance on modern society and its ethicality in the light of known ethical theories. This leads to our main discussion about the tradeoff between safety through surveillance and sacrificing people’s privacy, with a focus on ethics of using such techniques. In these contexts, we consider both private and public surveillance, highlighting ethicality of use of surveillance by the government.