Panopticonic

The NSA is watching you and reading your email even though they aren't supposed to be doing so without a direct court order. Code-named "Pinwale" -- the NSA has been using that database to listen in on your inner email thoughts and wonderings.

We know I don't think much of Twitter, even though I Tweet Boles Blogs Network updates.  I'm sort of the lonesome stepchild standing in the street yelling to everyone around me -- "But the bird has no feathers!" -- while the restless crowd around me Tweets about Twitter's beautiful plumage.  Over the weekend, my Twitter rage was redeemed by Twitter itself as it finally confessed its utterly dark yearnings in an official blog post telling us they only value protecting the identity of celebrity and fame and not the everyday ordinary Twit like us.

We know Google knows more about our neighbors than we know about ourselves -- but when hard numbers are presented against Google -- we begin to fill its pricking chill with no escape hatch available:

For the price of a US dollar, our Panopticonic universe just became a little smaller -- or larger if you're a fan of being spied upon by strangers -- with the release of "Surveillance Shaker" a new iPhone App that now lets you, with the shake of your iPhone, silently surveil the world without the watched knowing you're watching.

As we are watched and surveilled by those around us -- is cheating in plan sight a clever plan against the purpose of the Panopticon -- or do we need to pretend online "study aids" are really helpful to the soul and not deceitful against the mind? Is Cramster.com a "community of learning" or is it just a chance to cheat better in class at $9.95 a month for access to all the answers?

A court in Wisconsin upheld the legal right of police attaching a GPS device to a vehicle without a warrant and without needing to alert the person being tracked.

In a duplicitous move that only a Palin could hope to pull off by wholly underestimating our intelligence again, high-school dropout and unwed mother Bristol Palin -- daughter of said Sarah -- wants to be the public face of teen abstinence.

In a strange and alarming drop into the Panopticon, Air Force One -- yes, President Obama's official airplane as named when he's actually riding in it -- recently terrorized New York City, sans Obama, as it strafed downtown Manhattan for a photo shoot bringing back the good old bad days of the World Trade Center semiotic of airplanes-as-bombs crashing into buildings.

In London, two Austrians were detained because they were taking digital images of buses.  The police invoked "fighting terrorism" as the reason they required the deletion of the images from the tourists' camera.

In today's dangerous world, is it enough to just say "I Do" when you take a vow to love and protect your beloved other during a marriage ceremony?  Isn't it, perhaps, even more romantic to also add under your breath, "...and I'm watching you, too." at&t thinks so, too, and they now offer a "FamilyMap" service that allows you, for ten dollars a month, to track two phones on your cellular service family plan.  For $15.00USD a month, you can track up to five phones.  Now you can have peace of mind while those around you tremble with paranoia in their new lives under your unblinking Panopticonic gaze -- as demonstrated in the image below as I reflectively track myself, creating my own horrifying hallway of mirrors as I wonder if I'm coming or going: