Walking down the hallway, laughing out loud with my friends, I suddenly stopped my steps after a glance at an object hanging down from the ceiling: a candid camera. With its one eye, it was facing directly at me. It was looking at me, perceiving my actions, reading my lips. With a strong, abrupt uncomfortable feeling, I refused to act as myself. Yes, I stopped being Da Bin, yet started to act as a good student who would never run down the hallway or do something that would make the office upset.

In one science fiction movie (with a title that I cannot remember), one of the main characters reveals top government secret: the satellites will be soon used by the government to observe actions of each citizen. And there was a Korean book called “Pyo” which warned about a similar situation that will soon impend. When I read it, I gave a snort of laughter. Invasion of privacy, I would call it. It would never happen. No one would allow such a thing to happen. Yet with candid cameras watching over me, my friends, everyone in school, I started to think of it as a quite reasonable theory. If international schools–where the authorities claim to respect their students–start to invade students’ privacy, it only proves that the authorities suppose human nature as evil and unworthy of trust.

 

Although the original purpose and intention of the cameras are to prevent certain misbehaviors, I still feel like a prisoner in panopticon, a specially designed prison where everything can be seen by observers.

 

Advertisement