On the undecidability of the Panopticon detection problem
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The Panopticon (which means "watcher of everything") is a well-known structure of continuous surveillance and discipline proposed by Bentham in 1785. This device was, later, used by Foucault and other philosophers as a paradigm and metaphor for the study of constitutional power and knowledge as well as a model of individuals' deprivation of freedom. Nowadays, technological achievements have given rise to new, non-physical (unlike prisons), means of constant surveillance that transcend physical boundaries. This, combined with the confession of some governmental institutions that they actually collaborate with these Internet giants to collect or deduce information about people, creates a worrisome situation of several co-existing Panopticons that can act separately or in close collaboration. Thus, they can only be detected and identified through the expense of (perhaps considerable) effort. In this paper we provide a theoretical framework for studying the detectability status of Panopticons that fall under two theoretical, but not unrealistic, definitions. We show, using Oracle Turing Machines, that detecting modern day, ICT-based, Panopticons is an undecidable problem. Furthermore, we show that for each sufficiently expressive formal system, we can effectively construct a Turing Machine for which it is impossible to prove, within the formal system, either that it is a Panopticon or it is not a Panopticon.
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