For Foucault (1995, 195-210), Bentham’s Panopticon is a symbol of modern disciplinary society. “On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social ‘quarantine’, to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of ‘panopticism’ ” (Foucault 1995, 216). The Panopticon is an ideal architectural figure of modern disciplinary power. It consists of an annular building divided into different cells and a huge tower with windows in the middle. Prisoners, workers, pupils, as well as patients stay in the cells and a supervisor occupies the middle tower. The architecture allows the supervisor to observe all individuals in the cells without being seen. Not every inmate is observed at every moment, but no one knows if she or he is being monitored. Observation is possible at any time. As a result, everyone acts as if kept under surveillance all the time – individuals discipline themselves out of fear of surveillance. The Panopticon creates a consciousness of permanent visibility as a form of power, where bars, chains, and heavy locks are no longer necessary for domination. Foucault (1995, 228) finally asks: “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” In summary, Foucault analyses surveillance in the context of the emergence of modern disciplinary societies. He understands disciplines as forms of operational power relations and technologies of domination in order to discipline, control, and normalize people. For Foucault, the Panopticon is an ideal symbol of modern surveillance societies. Foucault’s understanding of surveillance and the Panopticon allows one to distinguish panoptic (affirmation of Foucault’s notion) and nonpanoptic (rejection of Foucault’s notion) approaches to defining (Internet) surveillance that may be used to construct a typology of existing surveillance literature and to discuss commonalties and differences among definitions of surveillance. Non-panoptic definitions of (online) surveillance make one or more of the following assumptions:

• Foucault’s notion of the Panopticon is useless for studying surveillance nowadays.