The Panopticon™ claims you robbed the bank. You know you were at work, in a meeting, and your coworkers vouch for your alibi. But the Panopticon™ is "always" right, so you get fast-tracked through the courts (saves taxpayer money not to have the case dragged out) and sentenced to ten years for a crime you didn't commit (your public defender was a huge help at sentencing). Because after all, if you couldn't trust the Panopticon™, then why the hell did they spend $600 billion of taxpayer money building it?
American society was founded on the bedrock of a few principles: you're innocent until you're proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, crime is prosecuted and not prevented, your reputation can be reset by moving somewhere new and making a new beginning, and trust, faith, and forgiveness are more worthy aims than proof, evidence, and justice, for the latter can only really obtained with great difficulty and cost through the courts. Panopticons go against all these principles.
Interestingly merely paranoia of surveillance results in self muzzling and self imposed restrictions.
In the end the results are not conducive for societies progress.
My dad got me paranoid about surveillance. Once I grew up old enough to look more than 2 years ahead I started censoring myself because the internet never forgets and I don't want to give a dossier full of potentially incriminating data when/if we slide from democracy to dictatorship.
The upside is that social media is ruined for me forever ;). In light of recent commentary, links to depression and addiction it looks like it turned out healthier for me.
Nonetheless I'm fully aware of the level of self-censorship I tend to sustain.
Governments are fallible just like human beings. I suppose in some sense it is arrogant to believe the US will always remain a democracy and certainly other countries have much more tumultuous histories.
I still like the idea of a totally open and transparent society but without something totally incorruptible and unbiased taking the role of government it does not seem practical.
for instance, see the Stasi.
...however, if intelligence gathered were all open-access, and classification abolished, I'd be into it.
Let's say I visit a church regularly, and someone who later turns out to be a terrorist was often there at the same time. Not surprising, since houses of worship often have predictable schedules of events.
How do I prove I wasn't collaborating with the terrorist?