In a world of constant financial exchange, are every move is monitored and tracked. As technology evolves the possibilities of surveillance has become more frequent and accessible to business and organizations.
There are many forms of surveillance that monitor the community however one of the most intrusive forms of tracking personal information is that of the debit or credit card. We see it used everyday by millions of people all over the world, very often without consideration of the onlooker
A constant ‘gaze’ over each transaction we make over sees and observes possible ‘disorder, theft and extortion’ (Foucault 1977:30).
A simple spending spree or act of indulgence can end in an interrogation and false convictions of how we conduct are fiancés.
An example of this sense of surveillance is, you could be buying something from a shop, you may spend a large amount of money in one go. The banks will register this in there database and may think that your card has been stolen. In many ways this could be seen as a positive monitoring, but on the other hand it makes you very aware that nothing you do goes unnoticed and someone is always watching you. Its strange to think that what you bought the other day is being stored on a database somewhere for years.
The efficiency of this power of surveillance in a sense has ‘pasted over to the other side’ (Foucault 1977:17-18). What Initially was a positive action to monitor illegal or criminal behavior had become a disruptive intrusion of privacy.