How Hard Is It to Detect Surveillance? A Formal Study of Panopticons and Their Detectability Problem

Abstract

The Panopticon (which means “watcher of everything”) is a well-known prison structure of continuous surveillance and discipline studied by Bentham in 1785. Today, where persistent, massive scale, surveillance is immensely facilitated by new technologies, the term Panopticon vaguely characterizes institutions with a power to acquire and process, undetectably, personal information. In this paper we propose a theoretical framework for studying Panopticons and their detectability status. We show, based on the Theory of Computation, that detecting Panopticons, modelled either as a simple Turing Machine or as an Oracle Turing Machine, 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, its Panopticon status. Finally, we discuss how Panopticons can be physically detected by the heat they dissipate each time they acquire, effortlessly, information in the form of an oracle and we investigate their detectability status with respect to a more powerful computational model than classical Turing Machines, the Infinite Time Turing Machines (ITTMs).