Edinburgh Napier University

  The article addresses the problem of surveillance within the framework of ethical information policy. Jeremy Bentham’s plan for a panoptic penitentiary is subjected to forensic analysis, using primary as well as published sources. The panopticon, it is argued, remains a key model of contemporary and emergent surveillance, as foil rather than exemplar. Michel Foucault’s influential reading of Bentham is defended against recent detractors in the field of surveillance studies. A new descriptor, the PanopticEon, is then introduced for the surveillance-infested age into which the world has entered. The argument concludes with brief reflections on strategies for maintaining privacy as an indispensable component of the good information society