Who is a hacker? Explain what is meant by “the hacker ethic” with the help of a contemporary example.

Hacker is a term that has been used to mean a variety of different things in computing. Depending on the context, the term could refer to a person in any one of several distinct (but not completely disjoint) communities and subcultures:

• A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts. The Request for Comments RFC 1392 amplifies this meaning as "[a] person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular."
• People committed to circumvention of computer security. This primarily concerns unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (Black hats), but also includes those who debug or fix security problems (White hats), and the morally ambiguous Grey hats. See Hacker (computer security).

Today, mainstream usage of “hacker” mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes what hacker slang calls “script kiddies,” people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with very little knowledge about the way they work. This usage has become so predominant that the general public is unaware that different meanings exist. While the self-designation of hobbyists as hackers is acknowledged by all three kinds of hackers, and the computer security hackers accept all uses of the word, people from the programmer subculture consider the computer intrusion related usage incorrect, and emphasize the difference between the two by calling to security breakers “crackers” (analogous to a safecracker).


Gary McKinnon (born 10 February 1966) is a Scottish systems administrator and hacker who has been accused of what one US prosecutor claims is the "biggest military computer hack of all time," although McKinnon himself states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. After a series of legal proceedings in England, McKinnon is currently awaiting extradition to the United States.

Hacker is a term that has been used to mean a variety of different things in computing. Depending on the context, the term could refer to a person in any one of several distinct (but not completely disjoint) communities and subcultures:

• A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts. The Request for Comments RFC 1392 amplifies this meaning as "[a] person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular." See Hacker (programmer subculture).
• The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s (e.g. the Homebrew Computer Club) and on software (computer games, software cracking, the demoscene) in the 1980s/1990s. The community included Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates and created the personal computing industry. See Hacker (hobbyist).
• People committed to circumvention of computer security. This primarily concerns unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (Black hats), but also includes those who debug or fix security problems (White hats), and the morally ambiguous Grey hats. See Hacker (computer security).

Today, mainstream usage of “hacker” mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes what hacker slang calls “script kiddies,” people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with very little knowledge about the way they work. This usage has become so predominant that the general public is unaware that different meanings exist. While the self-designation of hobbyists as hackers is acknowledged by all three kinds of hackers, and the computer security hackers accept all uses of the word, people from the programmer subculture consider the computer intrusion related usage incorrect, and emphasize the difference between the two by calling to security breakers “crackers” (analogous to a safecracker).

McKinnon is accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers over a 13-month period between February 2001 and March 2002, using the name 'Solo'. The computer networks he is accused of hacking include networks owned by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defense, and the US Air Force.
The US authorities claim he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the US Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours, as well as deleting US Navy Weapons logs, rendering a naval base's network of 300 computers inoperable after the September 11th terrorist attacks. McKinnon is also accused of copying data, account files and passwords onto his own computer. US authorities claim the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was over $700,000.
McKinnon has denied causing any damage, arguing that, in his quest for UFO-related material, he accessed open, unsecured machines with no passwords and no firewalls and that he left countless notes pointing out their many security failings. He disputes the damage and the financial loss claimed by the US as concocted in order to create a dollar amount justifying an extraditable offence. While not admitting that it constituted evidence of destruction, McKinnon did admit leaving a threat on one computer:

US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days … It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year … I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels …

US authorities claim that McKinnon is trying to downplay his own actions. A senior military officer at the Pentagon told The Sunday Telegraph: "US policy is to fight these attacks as strongly as possible. As a result of Mr McKinnon's actions, we suffered serious damage. This was not some harmless incident. He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-America messages. All the evidence was that someone was staging a very serious attack on US computer systems.


HACKER ETHICS :

Hacker work is, in the words of the hacker Linus Torvalds, "interesting, exciting, and joyous", "intrinsically interesting and challenging" and "goes beyond the realm of surviving or of economic life" . That these features are intrinsic to the work, rather than being a subjective attitude on the part of the individual, is demonstrated by a comment from an employee of Microsoft. The company competes with the work of hackers, often attacking them, and so charged an employee with the task of investigating the competitiveness of the hackers' work. Without any bias in favour of hackers, he wrote that when hacking on their software, "the feeling was exhilarating and addictive" (OSI, 1998).
It is important to note that when hackers talk about intrinsic motivation they almost always use adjectives like "fun", "passionate", "joyous" and "entertaining". In contemporary society we maintain a distinction between work and leisure, and are acutely aware of when work erodes the time we usually dedicate to leisure. To hackers, the distinction is a non sequitor. Hacking on some challenging code is every bit as entertaining as playing a game of football or reading a book, albeit in a different way. Not all play is "something wasteful [or] frivolous", and can be "the experience of being an active, creative and fully autonomous person"; to hack "is to dedicate yourself to realizing your full human potential; to take an essentially active, rather than passive stance towards your environment; and to be constantly guided in this by your sense of fulfilment (sic), meaning and satisfaction" .
This guiding sense is apparent in hackers' approach to work management, and specifically in how they decide what to work on. The dominant factor, according to most theorists, is the desire to "scratch and itch", i.e. to satisfy a need . This need may be a functional one where the hacker needs a particular bit of software, or it may be a personal one where the hacker wants to try his hand at a particular technique. Most hacker work is entered into voluntarily because it is "intellectually stimulating", because it "improves skills" and because of the code's "work functionality" . If this is the case, then the adjectives given by Torvalds and the Microsoft employee should not be thought of as the sole motivations for work, nor solely as pleasant byproducts, but rather as factors that affect how a hackers prefer to scratch their itches.
This orientation around the activity and its inherent worth gives rise to a meritocratic form of organisation. According to Levy, "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position." If a hacker wants to pursue a line of work, they simply start hacking and gain approval from other hackers when their work shows merit. Access to computing equipment and advice from fellow hackers isn't restricted by bureaucracy or unjust social arrangements . Of course meritocracies place demanding barriers to entry insofar as they require a certain level of skill and aptitude. They also fail to emphasise other aspects of personality or capability that we might find positive such as race and gender, which may be "deeply felt" by some individuals . This problem can be overcome simply by acknowledging the positive aspects of equal opportunities, and of social duties that help the less able; these suggestions are coherent with the hackers' work ethic.
Weizenbaum, an early critic of hackers, suggested that hackers work "without definite purpose". Unable to set long-term goals or analyse information in a teleological context, he claimed that hackers are aimless and disembodied. Compulsively scratching itches, Weizenbaum's hacker is like a hyperactive child who may engage passionately in frenzied activity without ever achieving anything. This is a culture that he describes as "instrumental rationality", the result of the belief that if some task is technically feasible then it is worth performing . For a work ethic to be truly fulfilling, truly meaningful, he suggests that it must account for some kind of worthwhile aim towards which the hackers' activity is directed. However, as Hannemyr (1999) has pointed out, hackers create products not only for the pleasure of the work but also for the utility and beauty of the products themselves. Hackers value "flexibility, tailorability, modularity and openendedness to facilitate on-going experimentation". The activity of creation may not be as aimless as Weizenbaum suggests, however one can still object that these aims are limited. Creating for the sake of abstract features in the product could still be characterised as a form of instrumental rationality, without wider personal or social goals such as the creation of tools that enhance personal life quality or that meet a pressing social need.
Wiezenbaum could reply that such a creative act would simply fetishise the role of information and activities that create it, without good reason to value them as abstract entities. He could further point out that such an attitude would have no objection to creating harmful products, such as software that facilitates anonymous online transfer of child pornography, if the creation of the product was particularly enjoyable and if the code was deemed to be beautiful. This lack of focus on outcome leads to an ambuguity in the work ethic: is it the case that hackers value characteristics inherent to the work and the code they create, or do they also account for the use value of the products? This ambiguity makes it difficult to say, given that they have a limited amount of time during which to hack, how they should spend it.
The hackers' work ethic, insofar as it concentrates on how one should work and why it should be motivating, invites the charge of self-indulgence. It argues for an autonomy in work that facilitates personal fulfilment without clarifying this ambiguity of values, and without accounting for social obligations that might reasonably abridge this autonomy. The Hacker Ethic does, however, encapsulate social obligations in part (c) mentioned above. These obligations can be most clearly studied in the free software movement, an applied example of the hackers' social ethic.
 


R Surender Naik
CH09B071

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Hacker & hacker ethics

Who is hacker?

The word “hacker” refers to someone who breaks into systems to damage it, or for the purpose of getting illegitimate access to resources.

It can also be defined as a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.

The Hacker's Ethics

The idea of a "hacker ethic" is perhaps best formulated in Steven Levy's 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Levy came up with six tenets:

1. Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative!
2. All information should be free.
3. Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degress, age, race, or position.
5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.
6. Computers can change your life for the better.

PHRACK, recognized as the "official" hacker newsletter, expanded on this creed with a rationale that can be summarized in three principles ("Doctor Crash," 1986).

[1] First, hackers reject the notion that "businesses" are the only groups entitled to access and use of modern technology.

[2] Second, hacking is a major weapon in the fight against encroaching computer technology.

[3] Finally, the high cost of equipment is beyond the means of most hackers, which results in the perception that hacking and phreaking are the only recourse to spreading computer literacy to the masses:

"Hacking. It is a full time hobby, taking countless hours per week to learn, experiment, and execute the art of penetrating multi-user computers: Why do hackers spend a good portion of their time hacking? Some might say it is scientific curiosity, others that it is for mental stimulation. But the true roots of hacker motives run much deeper than that. In this file I will describe the underlying motives of the aware hackers, make known the connections between Hacking, Phreaking, Carding, and Anarchy, and make known the "techno-revolution" which is laying seeds in the mind of every hacker. . . .If you need a tutorial on how to perform any of the above stated methods {of hacking}, please read a {PHRACK} file on it. And whatever you do, continue the fight. Whether you know it or not, if you are a hacker, you are a revolutionary. Don't worry, you're on the right side". ("Doctor Crash," 1986)

Although hackers freely acknowledge that their activities may be occasionally illegal, considerable emphasis is placed on limiting violations only to those required to obtain access and learn a system, and they display hostility toward those who transgress beyond beyond these limits. Most experienced CU members are suspicious of young novices who are often entranced with what they perceive to be the "romance" of hacking. Elite hackers complain continuously that novices are at an increased risk of apprehension and also can "trash" accounts on which experienced hackers have gained and hidden their access.

In sum, the hacker style reflects well-defined goals, communication networks, values, and an ethos of resistance to authority. Because hacking requires a broader range of knowledge than does phreaking, and because such knowledge can be acquired only through experience, hackers tend to be both older and more knowledgeable than phreaks. In addition, despite some overlap, the goals of the two are somewhat dissimilar. As a consequence, each group constitutes a separate analytic category. 
                        
Linus Torvald:

Linu's law appears in the prologue written by Linus torvald, who is the creator of the Linux operating system and one of the world's most famous hackers.It states that all the motivations (of hackers) fall into 3 categories and progress is about going through those very simple things in process of evolution.The categories in order are Survival , Social life and Entertainment .To hackers survival is not the main thing , by the time u have comp on ur desk, its not likely that your first worry is how to get next meal or keep a roof over ur head ,Survival is still a motivation factor,but is not really a main concern.He defines a hacker as a person who has progressed beyond first category and motivated by the II and III.Linus notes that  this progress from survival to social,to entertainment goals  can only occur if survival concerns are not foremost in one's mind .

-N.HARDEV
  CH09B066

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Who is a hacker? Discussed with help of a contemporary example – Tim Berners-Lee

Hacker is a term that has been used to mean a variety of different things in computing. Depending on the context, the term could refer to a person in any one of several distinct (but not completely disjoint) communities and subcultures. Today, mainstream usage of “hacker” mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s. This includes what hacker slang calls “script kiddies,” people breaking into computers using programs written by others.

Hacker ethic is the generic phrase which describes the values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community. The early hacker culture and resulting philosophy originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1950s and 1960s. The term 'hacker ethic' is attributed to journalist Steven Levy as described in his book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, written in 1984. The guidelines of the hacker ethic make it easy to see how computers have evolved into the personal devices we know and rely upon today. The key points within this ethic are access, free information, and improvement to quality of life.

  Tim Berners-Lee:

 Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system that we use to access sites, documents and files on the Internet. He has received numerous recognitions, most notably the Millennium Technology Prize.

While a student at Oxford University, Berners-Lee was caught hacking access with a friend and subsequently banned from University computers. w3.org reports, “Whilst [at Oxford], he built his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television.” Technological innovation seems to have run in his genes, as Berners-Lee’s parents were mathematicians who worked on the Manchester Mark1, one of the earliest electronic computers.

While working with CERN, a European nuclear research organization, Berners-Lee created a hypertext prototype system that helped researchers share and update information easily. He later realized that hypertext could be joined with the Internet. Berners-Lee recounts how he put them together: “I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and – ta-da! – the World Wide Web.”

Since his creation of the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT. The W3C describes itself as “an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff and the public work together to develop Web standards.” Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web idea, as well as standards from the W3C, is distributed freely with no patent or royalties due.

Gokul
CH09B065

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Who is a hacker? Explain what is meant by “the hacker ethic” with the help of a contemporary example.

Abstract:

This Post deals with defining a Hacker and the meaning of “Hacker Ethic” by taking into example of the -the face behind the facebook – MARK ZUCKERBERG

Introduction:

Are Hackers good or hacker’s are bad? Why do any one hack? The answer swiftly comes saying to “learn more about the system”, to know how the system really works, or sometimes to find out the loop holes in the system or to steal something. Each hacker wants to have recognition.Are the ethics which they follow,does they go on with the normal world ?

Who is a Hacker?

Hacker is a term that has been used to mean a variety of different things in computing. A community of enthusiast computer programmers and system designers, originated in the 1960s around the MIT's.The world wide web and the internet itself are also hacker artifacts. A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.” The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s and on software games in the 1980s/1990s. The community included Steve Jobs,Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates and created the personal computing industry.People committed to circumvention of computer security. This primarily concerns unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (Black hats), but also includes those who debug or fix security problems(White hats), and the morally ambiguous Grey hats Hacker (computer security)

Hacker’s Ethic:

The Hacker Ethic The hacker's obsession with computing leads to impatience and intolerance with anything that stands in the way.I want to express about “Hacker’s Ethics” by taking the example of “The face behind the facebook ”  MARK ZUCKERBERG

As the film tells it, during the winter of 2004, Zuckerberg, a curmudgeonly(bad tempered), craven genius, bristling against authority and embittered by the culture of wealth and privilege that excludes him, creates a social network to impress vapid women and the callow preppies of Harvard’s exclusive, all-male final clubs. He took a certain amount of enjoyment out of not necessarily breaking rules, but just pointing out that people who have responsibility for things are kind of stupid. Mark never looked like a person who created a website which can impress many people.

                                                                                                                                                

Mark gained campus notoriety in November 2003, when he created Facemash. The idea behind Facemash was simple: a website on which you could compare the attractiveness of two Harvard students, voting with the click of a mouse. The site, which was open to the world and which used official Harvard headshots, went viral over email lists, nabbing 22,000 votes from over 450 people. Clicking through Facemash filled one with that particular kind of Internet-induced sickness, combining the titillation of an anonymous chat room with the meanness of an old-fashioned slam book. It was callow, it was distasteful, and it was a lot of fun. Facemash managed to offend a lot of people, including Harvard University, seeing as Facemash violated all sorts of usage, privacy, and property codes. Mark was hauled before the Ad Board, Harvard College’s administrative board. While asking a question why and how Facebook is different from other social networking website Mark himself shrugged off his own site. “[Thefacebook.com] is basically the same thing on a different scale. It’s not very novel.” Zuckerberg exhibited a typically cavalier, insurgent attitude—and recklessness with words: “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the university a couple of years to get around to [building a facebook],” he said. “I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.” This shows his recklessness and insurgent attitude.

This gives an appropriate measure of a millionaire hacker. Who hacked to find the loop holes,for fun, to remove his ex-girlfriend from his mind came with an extra-ordinary social networking site “FACEBOOK”. As any other hacker he does not believe in human relationships and have a better bondage between him and computer. He has a bad attitude against others,which was one reason for the creation of the “Facebook”

Most of the inputs from the movie “The Social Network”

References:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-08/mark-zuckerberg-at-harvard-the-truth-behind-the-social-network/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

B.Vamshi

EE09B104

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Who is a HACKER ??

Hacker Defination 


In the media the word "hacker" is often used, for what I would call a "cracker", someone that breaks into systems to damage it, or for the purpose of getting illegitimate access to resources. A definition for hacker is found in The Hacker FAQ by Peter Seebs.
Ari Lukumies wrote:

As far as my terminology serves, crackers are those who give hackers a bad name (because most of the people cannot distinguish the two). Somebody who breaks into other's computer systems, or digs into their code (in order to make a copy-protected program run, for example) is a cracker. Then, someone who's really good at what he does with computers, is called a hacker. A hack, in software circles, is a quickly written short piece of code that makes something work. It may not be beautiful to look at, but it makes things function.

 Hacker ethics

.1 The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.

2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.

Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and giving away open-source software. A few go further and assert that all information should be free and any proprietary control of it is bad; this is the philosophy behind the GNU project.
Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But the belief that ‘ethical’ cracking excludes destruction at least moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as ‘benign’ crackers (see also samurai, gray hat). On this view, it may be one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from a superuser account, exactly how it was done and how the hole can be plugged — acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) tiger team.
The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as Usenet, FidoNet and the Internet itself can function without central control because of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a sense of community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangible asset.


Example of  Hacker :
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become the norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software can be regarded as a consequence triggered by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as stated by Stallman's MIT fellow Brewster Kahle.
When Brian Reid in 1979 placed time bombs in Scribe to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed it "a crime against humanity." He clarified, years later, that it is blocking the user's freedom that he believes is a crime, not the issue of charging for the software.
In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of the first laser printer, the Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software on an older printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users when the printer was jammed. Not being able to add this feature to the Dover printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be free to modify the software they use.
Richard Greenblatt, a fellow AI Lab hacker, founded Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) to market Lisp machines, which he and Tom Knight designed at the lab. Greenblatt rejected outside investment, believing that the proceeds from the construction and sale of a few machines could be profitably reinvested in the growth of the company. In contrast, the other hackers felt that the venture capital-funded approach was better. As no agreement could be reached, hackers from the latter camp founded Symbolics, with the aid of Russ Noftsker, an AI Lab administrator. Symbolics recruited most of the remaining hackers including notable hacker Bill Gosper, who then left the AI Lab. Symbolics forced Greenblatt to also resign by citing MIT policies. While both companies delivered proprietary software, Stallman believed that LMI, unlike Symbolics, had tried to avoid hurting the lab's community. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone the output of the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers.
Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to share with their neighbor and to be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He maintains that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are antisocial and unethical.The phrase "software wants to be free" is often incorrectly attributed to him, and Stallman argues that this is a misstatement of his philosophy. He argues that freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value, and not merely for pragmatic reasons such as possibly developing technically superior software.
In February 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983.

Syed Ashruf
AE09b025

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Information Panopticon & The Development and Convergence of ICTs in The Organization of Work

Abstract:
              I argue in this blog about Information Panopticon & the development and convergence of information and communication technologies(ICT),how its use in the organization of work as an example, is creating a global network of surveillance capabilities which affect the traveller. These surveillance capabilities are reminiscent of 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, and as such the emerging global surveillance network has been referred to as the ‘travel panopticon’.

History of Information Panopticon – Some Important Aspects:           
            Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher and political radical who influenced the development of liberalism. Bentham was a significant figure in 19th century Anglo-American philosophy, but he is perhaps best known as an early advocate of utilitarianism. Indeed, his secretary and collaborator was James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill—with whom utilitarianism is synonymous.
              Among Bentham’s insights and ideas was a plan for a multi-purpose disciplinary facility where the need for supervision was paramount. The primary function of the facility was as a prison or penitentiary, but Bentham thought the design equally applicable to schools, hospitals, ‘‘mad houses’’, and factories. In fact it was his brother Samuel’s efficient factory design which formed the basis for Bentham’s idea.

              The physical details of the panopticon are perhaps best given by paraphrasing Bentham himself: “The building is circular. The prisoners’ cells occupy the circumference, and are divided from each other to prevent all communication. The room for the inspector, or chief warden, occupies the centre of the building. Light is provided by a window in each cell, but the inspector’s room is designed in such a way that no direct light penetrates it from the perspective of the prisoners"
             This last point is crucial, as it enables the power of seeing without being seen—one of the essential ‘‘qualities’’ of the panopticon. As Bentham noted, this has the effect of creating the idea of surveillance in the prisoners’ minds and has the benefit that the inspector need not be in the central inspection room at all times. Such a quality of apparent omnipresent surveillance also has the consequence of creating a ‘‘chilling effect’’, where not only are the prisoners’ behaviours modified by the very course of incarceration, but that the prisoners also participate in their own self-modification. Michel Foucault wrote further on this in his work ‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’, where he argued that invisible power gazes relentlessly upon society’s citizens, and puts them under such intense scrutiny that they become persuaded to participate in their own subjection.

ICTs - an Introduction:
              Information & Communication Technology usually called ICT, is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT) but is usually a more general term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications  (telephone lines and wireless signals), intelligent building management systems and audio-visual systems in modern information technology.

Use of ICTs -  The Organization of Work & The Global Network of Surveillance:
              Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are reshaping many industries, often by reshaping how information is shared. Information-intensive industries, by their nature, show the greatest impacts due to ICTs that enable information sharing and the bypassing of traditional information intermediaries. However, while the effects and uses of ICT are often associated with organizations (and industries), their use occurs at the individual level. In other words, it is changes to individual work related to the use of ICTs that reshape both organization and industry structures, and viceversa.

              The now well established ICT paradigm is one based on developments in digital computing technologies combined  with advances in telecommunications capabilities. On top of this paradigm is emerging a whole range of new technological developments and applications—technologies which are enabling unprecedented convergence of hitherto disparate fields of human endeavour.  In particular, the convergence of these technologies is  having a profound effect on the policies and practices which nation states use for border control. This effect is transforming previously largely passive, incompatible, and primitive systems of border control into coordinated, sophisticated, and active systems of people tracking.This transformation has accelerated subsequent to the events in  the United States of September 11, 2001, and is resulting in the emergence of a seamless, ubiquitous, and continuous  form of travel surveillance.
              The travelling public are generally unaware of the scale, depth, or sophistication of this travel surveillance. They are also often unaware that they are under surveillance at all, let alone by whom they are being surveilled. Such surveillance characteristics are reminiscent of 18th century Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, and as such the phenomenon of systematic global mass travel surveillance has been referred to as the travel panopticon.
              Bentham’s panopticon was an architectural plan intended (primarily) for a prison building where the prison’s guard could observe all prisoners, but where the prisoners could not see the guard. The travel panopticon has much of this same functionality, albeit in a more complex and multifaceted form. Its overall effect is one of ICT enabled surveillance of people movement on a massive and global scale as well as at increasingly fine levels of segmentation. The emergence of the travel panopticon raises profound ethical, political, and societal questions,—namely what effect is this emergence having on personal autonomy which is an essential part of any canonical account of moral philosophy, and it is also one of the most important elements in the political tradition of liberalism.
              On the other hand, these Trusted traveller’ or ‘fast track’ schemes such as Passenger data sharing agreements, Radio frequency identification (RFID- sensor and scanner technologies that use radio waves to identify people or objects automatically) etc., encourage the uptake in the use of biometrics and RFIDs with the promise of faster queuing times and reduced ‘hassle’ at airports.

Conclusion:
               In this post, I tried to argue of technology enabling the understanding and conveying of information expands in speed, efficiency and boundary-spanning daily. This, in turn, may throw entire industries into turmoil, some roles becoming redundant while completely new ones emerge. New approaches to work, knowledge, information, ICT and organization structure are essential prerequisites to survive in this new environment.  
              Common to all the ‘trusted traveller’ schemes mentioned above is their two level method of operation. Their ‘public face’ is the potential to reduce waiting times at airports and other border areas and to reduce the ‘hassle factor’ in negotiating the often long lines of people and myriad of forms necessary to enter or exit a country. These technological and informational practices have in turn been complimented by laws and international agreements diluting important aspects of human rights and human rights conventions. All of these initiatives have the potential in and of themselves to reduce personal autonomy, but it is in their combined application that the true surveillance capability of the travel panopticon is realised and the real consequences for personal autonomy and human dignity emerge.

References:
(i)  Wikipedia  - for getting some of the definitions of terms.
(ii)  Semple, J. (1993). ‘Bentham’s prison: A study of the panopticon penitentiary’. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
(iii) ‘Personal autonomy in the travel panopticon’ an article by Eamon Daly Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.
(iv) ‘Dilemmas of Transformation in the Age of the Smart Machine’ by Shoshana ZuboJJ.

                                                                                                                                   Submitted by: Syed Ashruf,
                                                                                                                                                               AE09B025.

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"What is the Information Panopticon? Discussed with reference to the use of ICT in the organization of work since the 80's." – survellience state

Information panopticon represents a form of centralized power that uses information and communication technology (ICT) as observational tools and control mechanisms. It has originated from the term Panopticon, a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist

Jeremy Bentham.

The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are being watched. 

Within The Information Panopticon, Zuboff uses the architectural strategies of the panopticon as a metaphor to describe how information systems translate, record, and display human behavior. 

The information panopticon critiques how technological systems use transparency to assert power, control, and authority over us.

As these ICTs are introduced into the workplace, these information centers help managers to revamp their methods of communication, invite feedback, listen, coach, facilitate, manage many objectives, encourage autonomy, provide vision. In other words, technology can be used as a form of power that displays itself automatically and continuously.

Government is creating a surveillance state ?

In many developed countries the evidence is growing by the week that the government is creating a surveillance state.

It has a database containing the international travel records of all citizens.

In addition, the records of all children are to be held on, a national ID database is currently being developed, all health records currently held by GPs will be centrally available and a database of DNA profiles, ostensibly for criminals. 

Meanwhile, the ubiquitous CCTV cameras in every public space make personal privacy increasingly hard to maintain.

Even in the name of countering crime or combating terrorism, why should the state know where you are going, where you have been and whom you call while watching everyone’s movements on camera?

This is how the state(government) surrvillences its citizens.

Gokul

CH09B065

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