[-empyre-] the netopticon

[Johannes Birringer]

Hello all, hello Marc

what if one were to choose not to see the ironies in the Surveillance Studies Network report

 (...."surveillance society is better thought of as 
the outcome of modern organizational practices, businesses, government 
and the military than as a covert conspiracy. Surveillance may be viewed 
as progress towards efficient administration, in Max Weber's view, a 
benefit for the development of Western capitalism and the modern 
nation-state." )

or the similar manifesto of the  PCSO Watch project (which has "declared that 'We are all Police now'")

and took them at face value, arriving at the question you raise at the end and leave unanswered...

> what does watching the watchers allow us to do?>

Different agendas, same persisting power relations, and thus one wonders
where (as Simon writes: "Wikileaks has, by turning the Panoptic gaze back upon the observer, struck a
significant counter-attack in what might be considered an asymmetric info-war") the counter is.

with regards
Johannes Birringer