Is Morocco Moving Toward Adopting “Panopticism” to Legitimize Mass Surveillance?

The fight against the pandemic as a pretext for establishing mass surveillance:

The French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) opens the chapter on panopticism—in the third part dedicated to “Discipline” in his book Discipline and Punish—by analyzing the measures implemented in the late 17th century in French towns struck by the plague. As the author describes, these were extremely rigorous and severe measures: any violator risked immediate execution, including the officials tasked with enforcing them if they failed in their duties (M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Gallimard, 1975, pp. 197–198).

Given that the book is not about epidemics or ways to fight and prevent them, but rather examines crime, penal philosophy, the historical evolution of punitive techniques, social control methods, and the link between all these elements and the exercise of power, a fundamental question arises: why did the author cite these exceptional measures related to the plague outbreak as an introduction to what he termed panopticism—that is, the “system of mass surveillance”? The answer is simple and obvious: the spread of epidemics, far more than ordinary circumstances, provides the ideal pretext to resort to measures restricting individual freedoms. It enables the tracking and constant surveillance of individuals’ movements and actions, subjecting them to absolute control to ensure compliance with the emergency regulations imposed by the authorities.

Foucault drew upon this model of emergency measures, adopted in a crisis context, to examine the issue of “discipline” under normal conditions, outside any context of an epidemic, war, or natural disaster. Just as individuals comply with lockdown rules decreed during an epidemic only because they know they are being monitored by authorities enforcing those measures, citizens comply with state decisions—orders, prohibitions, laws, procedures, or regulations—only when they know they are being watched and are aware that any violation will expose them to sanctions, much like violating a lockdown.

“Panopticism” and the obsession with discipline in modern societies:

This continuous surveillance exerted over citizens by the state apparatus and its laws is what Foucault terms panopticism, a concept that can be rendered as a “system of mass surveillance.” Panopticism designates a system based on the panoptic mechanism, a term composed of the Greek prefix pan, meaning “all” or “every,” and “optic,” relating to sight and vision. The word “panoptic” thus refers to an “all-seeing vision” from which nothing escapes. The concept of mass surveillance based on the panoptic mechanism dates back to the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), who designed a multi-story circular prison featuring a central tower from which all cells and inmates could be observed. The prisoners, for their part, could not see who was observing them from the tower, which prompted them to act on the assumption that they were under permanent surveillance, even when no guard was present in the tower.

It is precisely this mechanism—one that preserves the effectiveness of control even when it is not actively enforced, that is, in the absence of a supervisor—that states today tend to adopt and generalize, as Foucault explains in his book. It serves as a tool of “social control” designed to ensure collective discipline through a diffuse and omnipresent manifestation of power. This power remains invisible because it operates at the most minute level, taking the form of what Foucault calls “micro-power.” When citizen discipline is achieved without any physical or visible demonstration of authority, it closely mirrors the panoptic model: individuals comply with the state’s decisions even without its physical presence, much as the inmates of the Panopticon obey the rules simply because they believe they are under constant observation, even if the presumed guard is absent. This is what led Foucault, as noted earlier, to title the final section of his chapter on “Discipline” as “Panopticism.” He sought to demonstrate that the way authority enforces discipline in contemporary societies resembles the panoptic system, aiming to establish all-encompassing surveillance without requiring the constant physical presence of the power exercising it.

Covid-19 and the expansion of surveillance to restrict freedoms:

In relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, what matters to us in the modern system of “panopticism” outlined by Foucault is not so much the spectacular advance of digital technologies—which has made panoptic surveillance effortless through CCTV cameras and the tracking of individuals via mobile phones and the internet, intruding into their private lives without revealing who is watching. What matters to us is the exploitation of this technological progress to subject citizens to panoptic control and curtail their freedoms under the state of health emergency, accompanied by a host of emergency measures designed to halt the spread of the coronavirus. We have seen how Foucault—from whose work Discipline and Punish the core of this reflection is drawn—cites the regulations enacted by French authorities in the late 17th century to combat the plague as a preamble to explaining the mechanisms through which power controls individuals to shape a disciplined society. This tight link between the outbreak of epidemics and the tightening of state control is evident in the measures imposed by most countries on their populations since the global spread of the virus in March 2020, through strict lockdowns restricting freedom of movement and personal liberties, backed by criminal penalties for violators.

From medical masks to muzzles for silencing dissent:

Insofar as these provisions were situational and temporary, dictated by the need to combat the coronavirus epidemic, Moroccans accepted them just like people in other countries. This was despite the fact that they represented a form of “panopticon” that heightened surveillance, curtailed freedoms, and required anyone holding a special movement permit to wear a face mask (which some wrongly term a “muzzle”—a serious misnomer, given that muzzles are intended for animals). However, the “ingenuity” of Moroccan officials led them to make this emergency measure permanent by normalizing it over time, transforming virus-protective masks into muzzles designed to stifle voices and permanently silence expression. Such is the aim of Draft Law 22.20, infamously known as the “gag law.” It represents an attempt to establish a system of mass surveillance that constitutes a modern version of the panoptic mechanism: once we know that our online writings and posts are monitored beyond what the state permits, we end up muzzling ourselves so as not to exceed the boundaries of tolerance that authority has deigned to grant us.

Although the state has recently enacted a series of laws regulating internet use and social media publishing, the success of an online boycott campaign targeting products from certain companies led authorities to believe that this digital realm was escaping their control. It consequently resolved to reassert absolute control by drafting a bill designed as a system of comprehensive panoptic surveillance—a liberty-crushing law—even though such repression is entirely unnecessary to regulate virtual space, which has already been governed for years by stringent criminal statutes. One need only recall that among the charges levied against numerous Rif Hirak activists was the simple act of having “posted content on Facebook,” as explicitly stated in their indictments. In reality, the state knows full well that the internet has become the primary arena for exercising freedom of expression when such freedom is confiscated from the public sphere. It has therefore instructed its rentier proxies in both government and parliament to devise a “panopticon” enabling it to extend absolute guardianship over this virtual space—a domain it now views as a new Bled Siba (an ungoverned territory beyond central control) requiring the deployment of a Harka (a military expedition historically dispatched by the sultan to subdue rebellious tribes) to bring it under the submission of the Makhzen. The mandatory wearing of sanitary masks during the state of health emergency thus provided a convenient pretext to push through a law imposing muzzles that stifle speech. As for the text’s panoptic architecture, it aims to allow the Makhzen power structure to pinpoint with absolute precision anyone refusing to wear the muzzle, ensuring they face the prescribed criminal penalties.

It is striking to note that this total, painstaking surveillance of citizens’ every move on social media, enabled by Draft Law 22.20, does not reflect the modern panopticon described by Foucault—which seeks to shape a disciplined society—but rather the classic panopticon envisioned by Jeremy Bentham, designed specifically for monitoring inmates. Under the reign of such a law, civic life comes to bear an uncanny resemblance to existence inside a vast prison: an expansive space, to be sure, but one where freedom is so constricted and residual that it becomes just as non-existent as in an ordinary penitentiary.

The link between this draft “gag law” and the successful boycott campaign targeting three major corporations—launched in April 2018 and sustained for nearly a year—is obvious to all. Article 14 of the bill is explicit in this regard: it mandates up to three years in prison for anyone who calls for “a boycott of certain products, goods, or services, or publicly incites such action.” This confirms that the bill’s true raison d’être is to safeguard the financial interests of those in power and perpetuate the conflation of business and politics. Such a state of affairs severely damages the economy by undermining competition, neutrality, equal opportunity, and investment incentives, while obscuring merit and hard work as sources of wealth creation and blocking the emergence of a genuine democracy rooted in the separation of powers.

Arabic version | French version