Relationships and Expectations

This chapter is focused on the perceptions of the public about the panoptic sort and its likely influence on society. Although the focus within the scholarly community was on surveillance, the term was not in broad use within the population, and as a result, estimates of public opinion at the time were limited to a focus on privacy as an issue of public concern. A broad variety of issues and concerns were explored in previously published and specially designed surveys of the U.S. public. The approach taken to understand the views of the public was shaped by the analysis of a series of focus group interviews that are described within this chapter. In addition to seeking discussants’ understanding of the generation and use of consumer and citizen profiles, the members of these focus groups were also invited to share their views about the kinds of limits they thought needed to be established to govern the use of profiling technologies. Of particular importance were their views about the sharing of personal and transaction-generated information with third parties. Most of these focus group members were quite knowledgeable about marketing activities, and only a small minority expressed strong criticism of their use.

Operating the Panoptic Sort

This chapter emphasizes the nature of the panoptic sort as a discriminatory technology. It emphasizes the role played by surveillance, or the collection, processing, and analysis of data gathered from a variety of transactions, many of them commercial, but many involving bureaucratic institutions involved in governance. While there is already an extensive literature on the nature and usage of data gathered by governments, this chapter focuses primarily on the transaction-generated information gathered by corporations. Its coverage includes traditional data-gathering methods familiar to government and social service agencies, but also includes technological systems, including the rapidly evolving telecommunications network. Considerable attention is paid to developments in the use of computers for data processing and analysis, including a primary function of the panoptic sort: classification, clustering, and segmentation of individuals into groups. The chapter ends with a discussion of an important but emergent segment of the information marketplace, that served by organizations that generate extensive lists of categories or types of persons, often described in terms of their market, or policy-related value.

A Data Protection Regime

This chapter is focused on the need for and the likely problems to be encountered as we pursue a regulatory response, especially through the traditional framework for thinking about privacy and data protection. This regulatory framework is characterized through a consideration of an evolving tradition beginning with the contributions that were made by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in 1890. Other perspectives, including those of Edward Bloustein, which suggested the importance of dignity and other intangible injuries are explored. Links between privacy interests and interests in intellectual property emerged within legislative and regulatory concerns being raised about rights to information. Of particular importance are struggles over information rights as they apply to individuals and rights claimed by corporate actors, including those rights being claimed by corporate pursuit of First Amendment, or speech, rights. Distinctions are also drawn in this chapter between rights sought as defenses against actions taken by corporate actors versus those of governmental actors, given the fact that the First Amendment as a constraint applies only to agencies of government. A variety of specific cases and continuing struggles within the legal and regulatory environment are described, and due note is taken of the increasing influence of a neoliberal framing of a “marketplace solution” as the appropriate solution for conflicts over informational rights. The chapter concludes with a discussion of “Fair Information Practices” as a strategy for assigning oversight responsibility for informational regulation to a government agency. While there was expression of hope and desire for a governmental agency focused solely on privacy-related concerns, the creation of such an agency in the United States was not forthcoming.

The Social Origins of Views on Privacy

Understanding the nature of public opinion about privacy and the collection and use of information by corporate and government agencies was dependent primarily upon the secondary analysis of a large number of surveys made public by the Harris Data Center. An additional and somewhat different perspective on related concerns was developed through the analysis of data from an original large telephone survey administered through an AT&T contractor, Maritz Marketing. A number of key questions were asked in both sets of surveys, but comparisons between 1978 and 1990 surveys allowed for the comparisons of the ways in which key responses changed over time. Among the more interesting were the changes in the levels of trustworthiness associated with particular actors at the time. The Census Bureau became more trustworthy, while telephone companies became considerably less so. Another comparison assessed the extent to which respondents were seeking to have a regulatory response applied to a particular area of activity. The secondary analysis of Harris data from 1978 made it possible to explore the social characteristics that were predictive of respondents’ orientations toward particular aspects of the panoptic sort. The variations of trust toward different institutional actors as a function of respondent age were quite substantial, and often curvilinear, with younger and older respondents often agreeing more with each other. Secondary analysis of data from 1989 surveys examined the relations between trust, and age, social class, and a variety of differences in experience. While those socioeconomic factors had considerable explanatory power, it was also clear that mass media exposure was playing an important role in shaping those opinions.

Conclusion

Majid Tehranian has suggested that we have only two options from which to shape our future, totalitarianism or communitarian democracy. Of course there are more. This brief conclusion suggests that we might even imagine a future that would be the result of a collaborative process involving “free acting, fully informed rational producers and consumers”. As has been my tendency so far, most of the possibilities I considered that have been identified by engaged scholars tend to invite a rather pessimistic view. My conclusion is one that nearly ends with Jacques Ellul’s description of a future in which we essentially come to accept control over our lives, in part because it all seems reasonable and sufficiently pleasant. But some of the final words have been reserved for L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, in which happenstance, associated with an unbalanced, cowardly lion, provides for a potentially alternative future.

Information and Power

This chapter develops an understanding of the relationships between information and power, in part through an examination of the uses and activities to which the panoptic sort has been applied. Panopticism and structuration are explored in considerable detail, but with special emphasis on their social and technical characteristics of different markets and cultural spheres. Of particular importance is this chapter’s emphasis on measurement and calculation, and its focus on prediction and coordination, representing a substantial step beyond more traditional efforts at description, and occasionally explanation. It is the pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness in the rationalization of control. It is not only control of production and distribution but the management of the purchase and consumption of goods, services, and experiences that dominates concern with the development of the panoptic sort.

Foreword

This foreword, an addition to this second edition, serves in part as a preface that was not included in the original. In addition to providing brief descriptions of the material to be covered in each of the chapters, it makes reference to important scholarly contributions made in related areas of concern that developed following the publication of The Panoptic Sort in 1993. Among these contributions, those made by Karl Marx, Jacques Ellul, Anthony Giddens, and Michel Foucault were featured quite extensively. Among my colleagues and contemporaries, particular attention was also paid to the contributions made by James Beniger, Klaus Krippendorff, David Lyon, Vincent Mosco, Helen Nissenbaum, Priscilla Regan, and Alan Westin. Although the book was focused primarily on the collection and use of personal and transaction generated information, critical changes in communication and information technology, including the internet and algorithmic data processing were noted as central factors in the further development of the panoptic sort.

Afterword

The afterword provides a detailed description of developments in the area of privacy and surveillance after the turn of the century and of the rapid developments in information technology and the monopoly firms like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, which have come to dominate the flow of information and the appropriation of consumer surplus. Its focus on technological systems includes the expanded internet, with special emphasis on the Internet of Things and the impact of the connections between humans, sensors, and machines. Special attention is paid to transformations in the nature of capitalism, reflected in assessments made by Shoshana Zuboff with regard to its focus on surveillance, and David Lyon and Bernard Harcourt with regard to the role of social media and the exhibitionist culture that it helped to develop. The risks to democratic systems associated with developments in computation and analysis, accelerated through advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, are described in the context of transformations in governance likely to accompany the emergence of an algorithmic Leviathan. At this point, an assessment of Jacques Ellul’s predictions about the future of our democratic systems is provided once again.

Corporate Perspectives on the Panoptic Sort

This chapter is focused on understanding the similarities and differences within the corporate sectors actively engaged in the development and use of the panoptic sort in support of their business ventures. The chapter focuses on three central actors of the time: the American Express Corporation, a dominant data services provider; TRW, a major defense contractor; and Equifax, an emerging giant in the provision of information about credit worthiness and other assessments of financial worth. Additional attention is focused on the special role played by a market auxiliary, the Direct Marketing Association, which played a central role in defending the industry against privacy laws and regulations emerging on the horizon. An additional effort to understand the corporate perspective on surveillance and the pursuit of power and influence made use of a survey of Fortune 500 companies at the time. Despite the quite low participation rate of the members of this special class, characteristics of their marketing techniques, their concerns about government regulation, and their assignment of responsibility for the development of a regulatory response were subject to analysis. It was not surprising to see how concerned they actually were about a consumer backlash against their collection and use of transaction-generated information.

Prologue

This prologue provides a brief introduction to the primary sources of the theoretical and philosophical frameworks which influenced the development of the panoptic sort as a point of focus and concern. It begins almost immediately with Karl Marx and other political economists seeking to understand the importance of technological systems in the continuing development of capitalism. It includes Jacques Ellul’s technicist emphasis as contrasted with Max Weber’s emphasis on rationalization and the search for efficiency and effectiveness in social as well as technological systems and institutions. Michel Foucault provides much more than an introduction to panopticism through his articulate linking of power and knowledge, and its application to discipline and social control. And while Foucault’s influence has been substantial, it comes in second to Anthony Giddens’ presentation of the nature and importance of the complexity within societal systems, and processes like “structuration,” that are linked to public policy and governance efforts that are becoming increasingly dependent upon surveillance and computational analytics.