Essay On Surveillance

“Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so” (Foucault 201). Surveillance is inevitable, all over the world humans are constantly being watched over like hawks in the daytime. No matter where you go or who you talk to you are never, truly, alone. From the moment of conception, we are being watched over by doctors, teachers, employers, and even the government. They watch us to make sure we maintain a specific behavior and to help us develop a sense of security. Although we are being watched every moment of our lives, do we not feel safe? Or is that what the “watchers” want us to believe? Suzanne

The government strives for this idea of a “pure community”, and to provide the citizens with false hope that we have achieved this. They provide us with borders and enough law enforcement to believe that we are safe from whatever lies outside of our border. However, we are not really safe, every day there is a new threat against America and we should be terrified of this. The government creates this façade that we can withstand anything; when that is far from the truth. How can the government promise us safety from the outside, when they cannot provide us with safety on the inside? We have enough law enforcement to make citizens behave, but what about the citizens who do not behave? They provide us with this false sense of safety, just like in The Hunger Games. They keep us within our boards, control what we watch, the information that escapes to the news, and they separate us from the outside world. All to try and create this sense of a “perfect world”. By controlling what we see and hear they are creating this false picture in the minds of every American