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Does Ireland risk becoming a surveillance society?
As technology makes it ever easier to monitor society, there is growing concern about the potential for abuse, Alex Meehan reports
When the philosopher Jeremy Bentham came up with the idea of a ‘panopticon’ in 1775, the problem his creation was seeking to solve was relatively simple. Could a prison be constructed in such a way that large numbers of prisoners could be watched by a small number of guards?
If so, it would mean the cost of running prisons could be lowered, and so Bentham’s solution was to arrange cells in a circle, with an ...
