China’s Surveillance State Is in Our Futures: Adrian Wooldridge

In 1787, Jeremy Bentham wrote a series of letters outlining his idea for a new kind of prison — a panopticon or inspection house — that would “grind rogues honest” by keeping them under constant inspection. The prison would be built in a circle around a central watchtower; the inmates would be isolated in their cells; guards in the watchtower would keep an unceasing watch on their charges.

The inspection system was not to be confined to prisons. Bentham thought it could be used in all sorts of institutions — schools, hospitals, mental asylums, workhouses and factories. This was because ...