What It’s Like to Live in an Invisible Prison of Surveillance

​Jeremy Bentham, the Enlightenment era philosopher of utilitarianism, sketched out the concept of a Panopticon – a prison designed to keep inmates under constant inspection by guards. 

What are the psychological consequences of knowing that one is being watched constantly? Last year we reported that SciTechDaily reported on an Australian study revealing that people who know they are being surveilled become hyperaware of faces, recognizing others faster than a control group. They become a little jumpy, always on the lookout to categorize someone as benign or a potential threat.

And those results came from knowing that one is being surveilled by a camera. What happens to the mental health and social life of people who are being watched not only by gear and gadgets, but also by government agents tailing them everywhere? Imagine putting out the garbage, going to a store, or picking up the kids from school only to see a familiar stranger across the street watching you.

This is the fate of “defector families” in North Korea. When someone defects from North Korea, the government punishes the defector’s relatives by subjecting them to persistent, relentless surveillance.

NK News profiles one such family who went through elaborate procedures to obtain internal travel documents to attend a family wedding. They turned back when they realized that their wedding party would also include a full complement of government agents tailing them and recording their every utterance and move.

“They went home to avoid making their relatives uncomfortable or causing problems on such an important day,” NK News reported.

A source told an NK reporter:

“These people live in an invisible prison, constantly anxious because everything they do is being watched. This surveillance and pressure cause severe psychological pain. One defector’s family described their difficulties, saying they must live their entire lives feeling like criminals from the moment they’re branded as having a defector relative. They gradually began avoiding people because having every breath, meal, and word monitored and reported became unbearable.”
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The United States is not North Korea. But we should not kid ourselves that the mounting surveillance of Americans – by facial recognition, by the tracking of our phones and cars, by the purchasing of our personal data – is free of a psychological cost.

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