Sgt. Chesty XIII, official mascot of the U.S. Marine Corps, right, stares down his successor Recruit Chesty, left, during training at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., March 20, 2013. Photo by Sgt.Dengrier Baez, U.S.M.C

As a new immigrant to the U.S. I had the privilege of serving in the U.S Marines from 1999-2004. This was a time when mobile phones were just starting to become the new standard for communication and most mobile phones were very primitive versions of their modern counterparts. Although the Marine Corps is known to be one of the most prestigious branches of military and prescribes values of honor, courage and commitment, there are a lot of events and everyday rituals that occur behind the scenes which people in the civilian world would not be able to handle. One could possibly attribute the aforementioned everyday rituals to deployment boredom and a warrior ethos where a subculture promotes brute savagery as a characteristic of masculinity. The difference between that time and current Marines is that now service members have easy access to social media by having a cell phone and the ability to post a picture video or comments  of questionable behavior in real time. As a result of this access, questionable behavior is heavily surveilled by people on the internet.

Take for example a recent scandal where a former Marine and purple heart recipient reveled that there were Marines posting images of women on a Facebook site. You can read that article Here. There is an ongoing investigation by NCIS uncovering the scope of this scandal. With this said, i want to point out that the only reason these Marines were caught was because they were being surveilled by someone who  pointed it out. This doesn’t mean that this behavior didn’t exist when i was in, merely the digital realm has replaced an analogous version of behavior where in those cases physical pictures were the medium. The price of being surveilled could be literal punishment. In the case of the military, if one is caught violating the U.C.M.J ( Uniformed code of military justice) the person could loose rank, pay and even be court marshalled. Therefore there is a direct correlation between being surveilled and punished as Foucoult mentions in page 212, as “The primary mechanism for the rise of self discipline of this kind is not the old medieval regime of torture and confinement, but rather a new set of techniques that are essentially intangible and visual.

1. Does the idea of surveillance deter you from doing things you really want to do?
2. If you were sure that you weren’t being watched how would you behave differently?