Who Watches the Watchers?

When the Roman poet Juvenal first used the phrase Quis custodiet ipsos custodes in the sixth of his second-century Satires, he was referring playfully to critics of his relationship with his wife. The phrase’s passage to its current status as a political lock-and-guard mechanism came via its misattribution to Plato’s Republic. But the observation of those whose role it is to observe, whether or not they are sanctioned by the state, is itself worthy of observation. Watching needs watching.

The idea is a simple one but it is a central supporting wall in the edifice of any entity that wishes to call itself a democracy; that those who are tasked with regulating the behavior of the citizenry must also be subject to the same level of scrutiny. This safeguard has been exponentially expanded and therefore complicated by the global success of the internet, and the rise of and ease of access to online information has led to the replacement of a culture in which political news and views were accessed solely via reading the newspaper and watching TV. Today, your telephone, even your child’s telephone, can allow you to watch world events unfolding in real time, and this small unit is a portal into a vast labyrinth of opposing political views and opinions. Juvenal’s conundrum (which leads, of course, to an infinite regress) has never been more pertinent than in our cyber-environment. This is an arena in which the watchers are able to do a lot more watching, but are becoming increasingly alarmed that this political voyeurism is reciprocal, and that they are being watched right back.

Watching, and being watched, is rapidly becoming the instinctive human activity which should concern us most. In our cyber world, the ability to watch increases steadily, and it is perfectly suited to the technocratic organization of control in which no one goes unobserved. In Martin Scorsese’s movie Casino, the boss – Sam “Ace” Rothstein, played by Robert de Niro – explains the surveillance system in his Las Vegas casino:

“In Las Vegas everybody’s got to watch everybody else. The players are looking to beat the casino. The dealers are watching the players. The box-men are watching the dealers. The floor-men are watching the box-men. The pit bosses are watching the floor-men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses, I’m watching the casino manager, and the eye in the sky is watching us all”.

Rothstein is referring to a central, revolving bank of cameras watching everything that takes place in the casino and monitored from a control room. This is a modern version of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, intended to control and secure prisons using the centralized ability to observe all the inmates and guards all the time. Bentham summarizes his design:

“The essence of it consists then, in the centrality of the inspector’s situation, combined with the well-known and most effectual contrivances for seeing without being seen.”

But now this centrality and invisibility are under threat as everyone gets to join in. Modern online observation evokes the “sphere of nature” suggested by French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal, in which “the center is everywhere, the circumference nowhere”. Anyone can be a watcher now, even of the other watchers.

Watching is a response to the need for security, beginning with physical security. The need to watch and thereby ensure one’s own safety and that of others is what links the soldier on guard duty with the visual entry-phone. Security, however, the making secure of something, is no longer concerned simply with the safety of the person. We hear much about national security, cyber-security, data security. The more security is required, in whatever different forms, the more watching will get done, and there will be more watchers to be watched.

The increasing invasiveness of Western states in the lives of its citizens is undeniable, and Big Brother is watching closely. The surveillance of citizens’ hitherto private lives, much of which now takes place online, seems to be a globalist objective in the West, and this is increasingly reflected in its legislation. Observation is moving away from being a physical transaction and becoming a virtual operation. Policing is shifting from the observation of what is usually accepted as criminality and towards the monitoring of statement and opinion, particularly online. The British police are increasingly criticized for, to use a contemporary phrase, “policing Tweets and not streets”. Definitive figures are hard to come by, but it seems clear that more people are currently being arrested in the UK for comments made on social media than in Russia. And it is not just the written word that is being monitored, but also the spoken.

As any hunter will tell you, hearing is as important as seeing, and so listening is as important as watching, and this certainly applies to the new Scottish Hate Crimes Bill, which was passed by the Scottish Parliament but is having a very hard time of it with those irritating people, the electorate. Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf’s pet project passed into law on April Fool’s Day and means that a household conversation can now be reported by a family member (or anyone else) if they find it to be actually, or even potentially, offensive to themselves or others. A vast network of police patrol points was set up whereby ordinary people could make a complaint about comments either online or at the dinner-table, if families still dine together.

There were 8,000 complaints in the first week, just 0.6% of which have been shown as legitimate, and Police Scotland have admitted this is straining already failing police resources. Scotland has the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe, for example, and a rising crime rate in line with the rest of the UK, and so many feel that watching drug dealers and burglars may be a more worthwhile occupation for the police. Be careful what you watch for.

To allay slightly our Orwellian fears, there are organizations who are watching the state. With some, the clue is in the name, as with London-based Big Brother Watch, who have been monitoring state surveillance in the UK for 15 years. Another meticulous observer is Biased BBC, who have much to observe. These are single-issue watchers, set up precisely to monitor and with watching as their mission statements. It is not quite as obvious, however, that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s largest regulator of the finance industry, should be monitoring the employment quotas of private companies in the interests of financial probity, which is supposed to be their remit. A press release outlines their new policy:

The FCA has finalised rules requiring listed companies to report information and disclose against targets on the representation of women and ethnic minorities on their boards and executive management, making it easier for investors to see the diversity of their senior leadership teams.

We might want to challenge the suggestion that investors make their decisions on how much a company’s board of directors resembles a 1980s Benetton ad, but with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Equality) just as intrusive in the UK as the US, the FCA is just one example of monitored affirmative action among many.

So, sometimes the watchers are themselves watched, and are not reveling in the spotlight. HOPE Not Hate (HnH) is an organization dedicated to exposing Britain’s “far Right”, a movement they invent in its absence, as I wrote about for Occidental Observer here two years ago. This year, HnH have had a gain of function, moving from a wagging finger in the background to a political fist. Within three hours of the publication of their 2024 annual report, British political party Reform UK had de-selected three of their candidates for the upcoming General Election. Once HnH got a taste for this political power at one remove, they kept going.

The watchers, however, are being watched by someone becoming increasingly adept at the art. Tommy Robinson is a leading hate figure on the Left, and divides those on the Right. He has produced a video which makes several allegations about HnH for which they would surely sue if Robinson has got his facts wrong. They started the cycle by devoting a huge slice of their report to denouncing Robinson, as well as gloating about his legal and financial struggles. Now he is watching them right back. So much for the “watchdogs”, as observational and regulatory bodies are often referred to in the UK. How far can they see?

The ability to watch improves as quickly as technology, and the current European drive towards digital identity is panoptical. The entire financial infrastructure of an individual’s life can now be monitored, and implications drawn from it which may not be to the advantage of that person. I saw an early example in Sweden 30 years ago. In Gothenburg, there were two systembolagets, or large government-run liquor stores. Identity must be shown and recorded when purchasing alcohol and, if the amount bought is considered too high for the household in question, social workers are sent to the home address to discuss issues around alcohol with the family or individual concerned. Under “digital identity” measures, there is nothing to stop the great panopticon of state from watching which books you buy, which organizations’ newsletters you receive, or whose lectures you attend. The European Union is building its own Chinese-style social credit system, and the de-banking of individuals and businesses for holding the “wrong” political opinions proceeds apace, at least in the UK.

The arrival of IT also means that American philosopher John Dewey’s classical observation is far more relevant than in the era of paper. Litera scripta manet translates as “That which is written down, remains”. But that was then. Now, paper documentation, shredders and waste-paper bin (or trashcan) fires are antique. Paper can be destroyed, as Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle found out to his cost in 1834 when his servant accidentally burned the first draft of Carlyle’s great work, The French Revolution. There was no backing it up then, but online documentation is not so easy to dispose of.

The state is increasingly out-sourcing its ability to watch its citizens to big-tech companies, and their level of monitoring can be retrospective as well as current. So-called “forensic” examination of a person’s past on social media can be used to bring someone down. When an account is banned by Twitter/X, you can’t start another, but they don’t expunge your Tweets. The account – including my own – is described as “permanently suspended”, but it is more like suspended animation. They keep all your Tweets in case they ever come in useful, in case you become one of those people who, as school-teachers once said of errant pupils, needs watching.

As for supposedly private communications, how can you know whether someone is reading your emails other than the intended recipient? I was advised to change to an encrypted service after being warned by an editor that one well-known email platform was allegedly partly staffed by diligent SJWs who see it as their duty to regulate their company’s service in an unofficial capacity by flagging up what they deem to be “problematic” correspondence, and subsequently closing accounts.

Then there is the natural defense of the reluctantly observed, a prohibition against watching, from the banning of a speaker or film to more subtly technocratic means. Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) made to the UK Government may by their name seem straightforward, but they are fitted with locks and guards to protect certain ethnic minorities from unwanted scrutiny. In June 2023, the reply to FOI reference number 2023 1066 was published on the website of the Office for National Statistics, The query was as follows:

“I would like to request data on violent crime in England and Wales broken down by the ethnicity of the perpetrator from 2016 to the most recent available year”.

The British police are already hobbled by the ludicrously exhaustive amount of documented information that must accompany each arrest, which means that the information requested will almost certainly be available. The response is interesting, and summed up in the first paragraph:

Our publications and data concern crime as it is experienced by the victim, or as it is recorded by police. Unfortunately, we do not, generally, produce statistics or details on the offender.

So, we have a victim-based report focusing on the experience of the person suffering the criminal act. This is not much use to a murder victim, but it is at least an attempt at a procedural approach. But collected data exists “as it is experienced by the victim or as it is recorded by police” [italics added]. As football fans say of referees who they feel have treated their team unfairly, he must be watching a different game to the rest of us.

In the UK, as in many other Western countries, illegal immigrants are watched far less than tax-paying indigenous citizens, and Migration Watch is another self-explanatory name for an organization that does just that. In 2022, their research showed that just 2% of immigrants arriving in the UK held passports. It is estimated that up to 90% of illegal migrants throw their passports into the English Channel, thereby rendering useless a globally recognized method by which people can be monitored. No English person returning from abroad would be allowed into the country without a passport. Do you ever get the feeling you are not being watched?

So, if you are online in any way, you are watching and being watched. For the data-harvesters, the swing of the scythe never stops. A variety of colloquialisms are appropriate for those just logging in: “Watch out”, “watch it”, “watch your step”, “watch what you say”. If you wish to assist someone who requires such a warning, you “watch their back”. And we should heed all of those warnings.

Finally, we should not get too carried away with our newly acquired super power of being able to watch the watchers. Don’t underestimate exactly who it is watching you. The ruling elites don’t have binoculars and your license number jotted down somewhere, they command the most technologically advanced panopticon in history. Don’t be over-confident when it comes to your locks and guards. Those comforted by the security blanket of their VPNs and unregistered phones may be exhibiting the same psychology as very small children who think that by covering their eyes, no one else can see them. So, watch yourselves.