While the events of September 11 brought substantive changes to the public sphere, private industry has been quick to capitalize on the increase in surveillance technologies. Public attitudes toward the government's heightened security measures were initially acquiescent, but there is little indication, then or in the years since, that the events of September 11 changed public opinion on privacy rights in the workplace or the realm of commerce.  The federal government's attitude toward extracting private information from private organizations has nonetheless provided something of a moral sanction in the use of private information for purposes of validation in the commercial sector. Klosek notes that against the backdrop of the war on terror,

. . . there has been a corresponding decline in efforts to protect privacy on the commercial side. With governments and individual citizens concerned about terrorism and focused on measures to prevent the same, efforts to place limitations on the ability of online retailers to use personal data for marketing purposes suddenly seemed less significant to legislators and regulators.

The motivating agendas between public and private spheres seem divergent, but behind each is the common goal of social control. Michel Foucault popularized the image of the Panopticon as a model to explain the efficacy of surveillance toward the goal of social control, and this image permeates all contemporary discussion of surveillance.

The term itself refers to the model of a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1787  that had, as its primary objective, the behavioral control of inmates by means of an ingenious observational mechanism. The prison was to be created in a circular form with individual cells on the perimeter, and a central tower with an unobstructed view of each cell. The construction was such that each cell would be isolated from the view of other cells but, through a system of apertures, backlighting, mirrors and communication tubes,  was entirely exposed to the view of the central tower at any time of the day or night. Within the tower resides the Inspector, an individual with the capability of monitoring every cell in the prison, but without the ability of the prisoner to detect when such observation is occurring. The prisoners therefore have a sense of being observed at all times, whether or not they are, in fact, actively being observed. The awareness of constant surveillance-the psychological influence of being under the Inspector's gaze-was calculated to undermine deviant behavior more effectively than the threat of violent punishment alone, as it left the prisoner no reasonable consideration that his or her behavior would escape notice.

Bentham's goal was the control of behavior, the restraint of deviance from established norms in large populations. He saw in it a "great and new invented instrument of government" and believed that it promised "the only effective instrument of reformative management."  Foucault notes that the Panopticon "must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men."  Bentham himself envisioned applications of the Panopticon that went far beyond the prison, including hospitals, schools, factories, etc.  For Foucault, this model epitomized the social disciplines of modernity, a mechanism that was increasingly permeating institutions which have, as their goal, the rationalization of human behavior.

. . . The Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use.

Foucault has been faulted for not factoring information technologies into a theory of surveillance more applicable to present times,  but his goals were not so much to relate the Panopticon to a variety of social contexts as to apply it specifically toward changes in the prison system resulting in the modern penitentiary. The social spectacle of violence as a means to invoke discipline and control has been replaced by an awareness of continual surveillance, a movement that is clearly reflected in the evolution of the prison system.