How did you celebrate Christmas? At the Tony Blair Institute they asked Shaban Mahmood along to their Christmas reception to share her dream of total state surveillance.
She talked of AI and technology having a transformative impact on "the whole of the law and order space", and told them:
"My ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times."
Bentham's Panopticon was a design for a prison with a circular layout that would allow wardens to observe every prisoner at all times. Though it was never built in Bentham's day, the 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault saw the Panopticon as the model adopted schools, factories and police surveillance.
To Foucault, a key feature of the Bentham's design was the central tower from which a single warden could see all the inmates without their knowing when they were being watched. The result would be that the prisoners would internalise the warden's gaze, even if they were rarely or never watched.
It's hard, as a Liberal, not to conclude that Mahmood was saying the quite bit of Labourism out loud.
But let's leave the last word to Foucault's mum:
Foucault: Schools serve the same social function as prisons and mental institutions.
Foucault's mum: You're still going.
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