It is not about what we disclose in particular, it is more about the connections which create a whole. Around every person is a network of information which we can use like our saved password we don’t need to type in anymore. Every day we are further developing this monitoring network around us. An algorithm is saving our information and connects all of them. This way it builds up a network of data which only fits to one person, and that is you. Tracking is an instrument to connect all of the data we are providing online. We manly use Apps that don’t cost us anything. And we are accepting the Terms of using without reading them. What we often don’t know is, that 5,5% of all Apps have access to your pictures without necessarily needing to. Angry Bird for example has access to the contact book on the phone and gives the information away. Tracking happens in the background so we mostly don’t recognize it. But if we are receiving a lot of spam mails or having a particular advertise following us on every website, we can divine the impact of tracking. As soon as there are enough information collected one’s network an algorithm can create a personal profile. This profile makes it possible, that we are only get displayed advertisement, articles etc. in which we probably are interested. But at the same time our consume and opinion making is influenced externally. #blackbox  #participation

Also this network can be easily used for surveillance. In the 1980 Jeremy Bentham came up with the idea of the Panopticum. The Panopticum is a draft of a prison without corporal punishment. Because of its circular construction all the prisoners can be monitored by one person from a central point. The prisoners are separated from each other by walls, so they can’t communicate. #definition No collective can be established. This permanent surveillance should changes the behaviour of the prisoners. Foucault also transfers this surveillance model to the society. If people could be monitored all the time, everyone behave conform and productive. The individual internalizes the mechanisms of this power. According Foucault there is no autonomous essential core of a subject. People are products of social circumstances, of the discourses, and of power relationships. #philosophy

The basic idea of the Panopticum is to have no privacy at all. We thought we had negotiated the Panopticum but maybe we had undervalued the internet as a perfect tool to refine the idea. The main function of the internet seems to be the network. Knowingly and not knowingly we are publishing private information about our self in the internet. But the network of information we are creating actually leads to isolation. The more information we are spreading the more individually they can be assigned to one particular person.

With the development of the computer programme Prism which is used by the NSA to spy on certain persons and even states, the Panopticum gets curiously real. Prism is able to monitor and evaluate electronical media and data. It is has been developed to monitor persons in- and outside of America. Big companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple and AOL are participating. Through Edward Snowden, in the figurative sense, the NSA turns out to be the person in the tower of Panopticum. But there can be other forces on that position in the future.

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