From Panopticon to Platform: Foucault on Surveillance and Privacy: Essay 2 of 3

The Old Prison and the New Platform

In 1791, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed a prison he called the Panopticon. Its structure was simple: a central watchtower surrounded by cells. Prisoners could not know if they were being observed at any given moment, so they behaved as if they were always watched.

Foucault seized on this idea in Discipline and Punish (1975) as a metaphor for modern power. He argued that in the modern world, punishment is less about breaking bodies in public squares and more about training people to regulate themselves. Schools, hospitals, barracks, and prisons all became laboratories of discipline. Power worked by observation, normalisation, and internalisation.

Two and a half centuries later, Bentham’s Panopticon has been reborn. Only now, it lives in our phones, our browsers, and our feeds. Surveillance is not just the eye of the state; it is the constant presence of platforms.

Digital Discipline

Our social lives unfold in semi-public spaces where visibility is the price of participation. To be online is to be observable. To post is to accept judgment. To belong is to curate oneself in anticipation of an audience.

For marginalised groups, this discipline is sharper. Trans people online live with the awareness that anything they say can be screen-captured, circulated, and turned against them. Māori and Pacific activists know that their speech can be reframed as threatening or “extremist.” Surveillance is not only from governments but from peers, employers, and anonymous strangers.

The result is a new form of discipline: people police themselves, moderating their voices, anticipating hostility, curating their identities to avoid punishment. This is power not through repression but through normalisation — exactly what Foucault described.

The Commercial Panopticon

But unlike the nineteenth-century Panopticon, our digital surveillance is also commercial. Platforms track every click, every pause, every purchase. Data is not only collected but monetised, turned into predictive profiles. The Panopticon no longer needs guards; it is automated, run by algorithms whose purpose is profit as much as order.

This has profound implications for rights. Privacy is not simply the right to keep secrets. It is the right to be free from constant monitoring that shapes behaviour. It is the right to develop oneself without the pressure of permanent visibility.

Yet privacy law often lags behind. It treats surveillance as state intrusion, when in fact the most pervasive surveillance is conducted by private companies whose reach exceeds any single government.

Freedom of Expression Under Surveillance

Surveillance also corrodes freedom of expression. Formally, we may be free to speak, but in practice constant monitoring produces silence. People self-censor to avoid harassment or reputational damage. Communities with histories of surveillance — Indigenous groups, migrants, political dissidents — internalise the gaze of authority even when it is not directly present.

Here Foucault’s insight is vital. He reminds us that censorship is not the only threat to speech. The greater danger is that people shape themselves in anticipation of surveillance, narrowing the horizons of what can be said.

Human rights frameworks must catch up. Protecting free expression today (with a tight carve out for hate speech which threatens societal cohesion) means not only defending against government bans, but confronting the diffuse systems of monitoring — state, corporate, and social — that shape who dares to speak at all.

Human Rights in the Platform Age

So what should human rights advocacy do in this new environment? Several lessons follow from Foucault.

1. Privacy must be reimagined. It is not just about secrets; it is about freedom from constant observation. Rights work must push for robust data protections, algorithmic transparency, and limits on surveillance capitalism.
2. Expression must be defended structurally. It is not enough to say “everyone has free speech.” The conditions of speech must be made safe for the vulnerable: protections against harassment, clear platform accountability, and support for those disproportionately targeted.
3. Surveillance is cultural, not just legal. Resistance requires not only regulation but cultural change: building norms of digital solidarity, refusing to normalise online shaming, and challenging the idea that visibility must always be monetised.
4. Marginalised groups must lead. Those who live under the heaviest gaze — Indigenous peoples, trans communities, migrants — have the sharpest insights into how surveillance operates. Human rights advocacy must be shaped by their experiences.

Towards Biopower

The Panopticon shows how individuals are disciplined. But Foucault’s later work went further: modern states do not only monitor individuals, they manage populations. Health, fertility, sexuality, and life itself become objects of governance.

This brings us to the next movement in the series. If the first post showed how power produces categories of truth, and this post shows how power disciplines behaviour through surveillance, the final post will turn to the broadest horizon: how power regulates life itself — what Foucault called biopower. From reproductive rights to trans healthcare to pandemic governance, the question will be not only who is watched, but who is allowed to live, flourish, and belong.