surveillance.
I’ve learned that I’m under surveillance again. People ask about this, so I’ll tell you – this is how you know if you’re under surveillance: you hire a private investigator. Investigators are expensive as shit, but as far as I can tell, the only way to know if someone has you under surveillance is to put yourself under surveillance.
Anyway, I’m under surveillance.
There are whole organizations dedicated to surveillance, so we’re not talking about some retired cop in a small, dusty office. These things are large, corporate, and efficient. I understand they have different specializations, like intellectual property, insurance fraud, arbitrage. That might be understandable, if creepy, but it’s less understandable when they’re applied to private individuals.
It’s most likely a former client who’s doing this, one of a few who treat surveillance as if it were the most natural act in the world and keep these investigators on retainer. These are men for whom surveillance is merely the collecting of information. They’ve said this much to me.
“I believe it’s important to gather as much data as possible by any means possible.” That’s stalker-talk, and yet I’ve heard this from more than one client in the past. And it’s never given them pause.
I’m writing about this now knowing there’s a chance they’ll find this. At this point, they’re welcome to. They can fuck themselves.
*
Surveillance disturbs me. It triggers both fear and fury, which I experience in cycles, in alternation. It scares me that someone, anyone, is willing to spend the time and money and energy to keep me under watch. And then I get angry at myself for feeling afraid, for letting this affect me, and I get furious at these men for doing this. Men who put me under surveillance are obsessed with control.
It’s all about control. And people who feel the need to exert this kind of control are fundamentally weak. Weak-minded, weak-willed, and sexually ineffectual.
Trust me.
I feel old-fashioned on this, since there’s a whole generation that’s grown up on reality television and web cams, but for me, the thought of being watched and followed is chilling.
To me, surveillance is the Panopticon, Jeremy Benthem’s design for a prison in which the prisoners could be observed without their awareness. It’s an unequal gaze; it’s Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and Orwell’s 1984 and London’s creepy-ubiquitous CCTV. Surveillance, to me, is social control.
Jeremy Benthem, Panopticon (1791)
Well, it is.
Or in my case, it’s just control. A feeble attempt at control in the absence of real power. Whoever this is, and I’m pretty sure I know who it is, hates that there’s a part of my life that’s my own. I’d like to think these men put me under surveillance to make sure I’m not talking – when I’m feeling generous, that’s what I tell myself – but I don’t think that’s it.
They’re just weak fucking excuses for human beings.
That is disturbing.
I find it appalling that people with money are able to do as they please.
Weak is an understatement. I’m sorry to hear about it.
However, why not take the opportunity to fuck with them a bit. Do things that are weird and totally unexplainable or just unexpected. Perhaps too much information or too much weird information will make them lose interest. Perhaps taking control of the information you’re giving them would make you feel more powerful.
Just a few ideas:
-Have someone arrive in a bunny suit and dance in your window. Or…just show up in a bunny suit.
-Bring the P.I. coffee in the morning if they’re waiting outside in their car (not sure if they do this but…well..it would be funny).
-If they’re going through your garbage, put some pregnancy tests that look like they are positive in the garbage.
-Again, if you see someone watching you, walk about a foot away from them and then bring out a pair of binoculars and just stare at them.
-Put a sign in the window that says “Who Watches The Watchers” or something like that.
-Walk around with a briefcase handcuffed to your wrist.
Sure, none of these will probably solve your problem but at least you can know you’re in more control.
Oh man, not again. Let me know if you need anything.
Sorry to hear about the watching. I’ve never been anywhere close to that situation, but know how irritated I get even when people want to know my whereabouts and time plans when they don’t need to, so can only sympathise.
A question – doesn’t panopticon presuppose that all prisoners are watching all other prisoners so it is about control through internalisation rather than the kind Orwell wrote about or Zamyatin’s ‘We’. If you haven’t read it and have time/chance, I recommend it – It’s about the unhappiness of emotion and freedom and the joy of being watched, part of a group and tightly controlled.
I was trained as an historian, so I’m an information junkie. I can see wanting to know sexual things about a lover— collecting information to use as part of fantasies. That’s something I cn understand. But it is just…appalling and (worse) rude to have someone watched for no reason— just to feel in control.
I understand that, through Bentham’s model, the prisoners are placed in cells that are oriented around this central axis, this watch-tower. The prisoners know they’re being watched but they can’t see the watchman – it’s a kind of one-way gaze. They also can’t verify whether there’s anyone in the tower. So I take this as a form of social control through self-governance rather than social governance.
I know certain cultures, like the Venetian Republic (esp. 16th c. through the 18th c.), used social surveillance as a form of control, with something called the ‘bocca di leone’ where citizens were encouraged to slip a note to the government when they knew someone had broken the law. Whether those notes were read didn’t really matter – what mattered was that people could, potentially, rat one another out, for treason, for sodomy, for contraband, and so forth. So anyone could be a spy, meaning society could, in theory, control itself through this culture of paranoia and distrust. And that sounds a little like what you’re saying, of people keeping an eye on one another.
But I take the panopticon as social control through self-control or self-governance (which, maybe, is also what you’re saying). I take it that you watch your step because you don’t know who’s watching, or whether they’re watching, so you’re forced to assume that you’re being watched at all times (which I think Benthem pitched as a cost-saving mechanism, since you didn’t actually need to watch the prisoners – you just needed to make them think that they were being watched). And that feels pretty Orwellian to me. Actually, both feel Orwellian.
I’ll check out that Zamyatin – I’m intrigued. Thanks for that.
Leave it to me to be sucked out of silence by the literary criticism.
If you’ve even seen the “this email may be monitored by employer blah blah blah” and wondered if you shouldn’t be sending that flirtacious email over company email you’ve felt the panopticon effect. It’s embodied in the “if you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear” cliche as well.
As Jane pointed out, Foucault’s version more adeptly handles modern life, where the very act being visible compels you to behave, as you imagine a far more personal and painful punishment for yourself than others would.
I.e. Jane’s stalker (We can call it that, can’t we? That’s what it is – albeit professionalized?) can have any number of goals in mind, but the outcomes that will haunt her are the ones most personal to her.
Jane: I feel for you. The anonymity is a human joy, and losing it is painful. I hope it doesn’t come to anything like that and you manage to solve this problem neatly.
Zamyatin’s “We” is well worth reading.
I’m glad someone remembered the Venetian model— also supplemented by the Inquisition of State. It’s all very like the DDR— 25% of the population informed on behalf of the Stasi —or the Stalin-era idea that in any group of friends, there would be at least one informer…which prompts people to inform lest they be accused of *not* informing.
This is rancid and you are spot on that it all proceeds from wormy weakness . I don’t have any antidote but it seems that you have to just keep living your life–otherwise he wins. I gather from your post that is exactly what you plan to do, and good on you for it.
If I see an extremely attractive woman in false nose and Groucho glasses, I am going to assume it is you.
That is absolutely fucking terrifying.
What first lead you to suspect that you are being watched? How does one know when to start worrying?
Tread lightly love, sometimes it’s best to err on the side of caution.
Are some of your patrons Powerful and Important? Are they paranoid you’re telling their secrets (all the stuff they bragged about to impress you) to their Powerful and Important enemies? “Under Surveillance” seems pretty strange otherwise, and more like “Being Stalked.”
Creepy.
Security is a tough issue, especially for those who wish to remain private. According to most experts, it’s just a matter of economics in the end. If its worth more to you to remain private than it is to them to discover information about you, you win; if not, they win. That’s why the NSA wins; they spend billions to surveil us and there’s not much we can do about it because we can’t outspend them.
That said, I think one slightly-humorous and potentially empowering response would be to draft up a bill for all the times you think you’re being watched and send it to the top three most likely clients. Those that have no idea what you are talking about will reject it, but the one who is responsible might actually pay it. After all, he has the money and you are entertaining him.
$0.02,
Will
i like the idea of the bunny suit. perhaps it is just something to make you smile when you are scared. i hate thinking of you frightened. even though i am sure you are. often. i would be. godspeed, d.
“I feel old-fashioned on this, since there’s a whole generation that’s grown up on reality television and web cams, but for me, the thought of being watched and followed is chilling.”
that’s because they aren’t the same thing.
i voluntarily out myself on my blog and in my life. i do NOT out the parts of me that i choose to keep sacred. they are invading your sacred rather than your public self and that’s why it’s so icky.
icky yucky gross
makes me want to bathe in bleach