Today, faced with recurring crisis scenarios and the normalization of surveillance, the questions raised by Foucault remain relevant.
*Prof. Dr. Marcos César Alvarez and Marcelo Batista Nery
The work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, published 50 years ago by Michel Foucault (1926–1984)1, is a fundamental theoretical framework for understanding the transformations in the mechanisms of power and social control in modern societies. In it, Foucault proposes an analytical shift in the study of power: rather than focusing exclusively on traditional repressive mechanisms—such as laws and sanctions—he highlights the aspects that operate through everyday practices of discipline and surveillance. His analysis reveals how these practices shape subjectivities, institutions, and processes.
Today, faced with recurring crisis scenarios and the normalization of surveillance, the questions raised by Foucault continue to spark relevant reflections. The use of monitoring technologies (data capture and facial recognition, for example) and algorithmic management update and expand the ethical dilemmas he already anticipated.
To delve deeper into the reflections proposed here, it is essential to understand the very notion of "discipline" he proposes. In Discipline and Punish, it is conceived as a technology of power or sociality that transcends specific institutions and infiltrates diverse spaces—such as schools, factories, and hospitals. It acts as a technique of normalization, organizing us in space and time: prescribing rhythms, movements, and behaviors continuously and meticulously.
This analysis emerges in the political context of post-1968 France, a period marked by institutional reforms, pressure for greater democratic participation, social pluralism—with the crisis of the Gaullist model—and the questioning of traditional structures of authority. Foucault actively engaged in social struggles against systems of psychiatric confinement and prisons. His critique of institutions—understood as cogs in a broader system of power—still resonates powerfully.
In a complementary way, in their subsequent courses in College of France, Foucault introduces other forms of power, such as "security technologies," which are distinct from the discipline because they focus on the management of populations as a whole. While the discipline focuses on individuals, this technology operates with collective and probabilistic variables—such as the number of cases of a disease, the number of people affected by disasters, or crime rates. The focus, therefore, shifts to risk regulation, event anticipation, and the organization of preventive responses. To this end, knowledge tools such as statistics are used.
Foucault's ideas remain relevant in the face of the challenges of the digital world. As technology advances, the mechanisms of power become more complex. Mass data collection, facial recognition systems, and monitoring platforms combine disciplinary norms with probabilistic calculations and public policies that reinforce an increasingly overt security logic. Real-time analysis and the construction of predictive models, far from breaking with this logic, often reproduce it—influencing decisions that affect marginalized social groups, often without transparency or accountability.
Artificial intelligence (AI) applied to security cameras—especially those based on computer vision and machine learning—has been used to analyze and identify behavioral patterns. Its functions include detecting sudden crowds, movements outside the expected flow, clothing patterns, and behaviors considered atypical. In doing so, these technologies regroup disparate populations—such as those considered deviant, insane or ill, criminals, the poor, and so on—based on risk or anomaly criteria.
This use of AI raises significant concerns, especially regarding the amplification of biases and inequalities present in the data. Systems trained with historically discriminatory datasets tend to reproduce and intensify social stigmas, becoming selective instruments of control. Individuals and groups may become disproportionate targets of approaches, investigations, or restrictions on rights based not on objective evidence, but on inferences derived from historical patterns of exclusion, stigmatization, and inequality.
Incidentally, the debate on AI can also be enriched by Foucault's notion of "dispositifs"—heterogeneous arrangements of knowledge, practices, techniques, and institutions that structure ways of life and social relations. In this context, technology not only measures or observes: it classifies, hierarchizes, and intervenes, becoming an active agent in the production of norms and social life itself. Power, from this perspective, does not operate vertically, but circulates, infiltrates, and shapes everyday behaviors and expectations.
For better or worse, digital technologies not only monitor and standardize behavior, but also identify deviations—often based on questionable standards—and induce behaviors deemed desirable, according to controversial interests, through scoring systems, symbolic rewards, and/or silent exclusions. As Foucault pointed out, this is a power that doesn't limit itself to repression; it also produces. It produces truths, trajectories, identities, and inequalities.
In short, on the semi-centenary of Foucault's famous book, his analysis continues to be a powerful tool for understanding the relationships between technologies, risk, and control. With each rereading of Discipline and Punish, we find something new to reflect on, a text that is constantly renewed as it is read by successive generations and, thus, never remains the same.
In times of hyperconnectivity and the algorithmization of daily life, his contributions help identify continuities and transformations in contemporary modes of governance and regulation. A deeper consideration of the social consequences of the use of these technologies is necessary, such as the segregation and criminalization of already stigmatized populations. More than ever, Foucault's reflections encourage us to problematize the links between the mechanisms of power and knowledge and the production of forms of subjectivity. They constantly point to the present, to the possibilities and risks present in technologies as social and political practices.
For more on Foucault and his work Discipline and Punish (1975) see:
Thematic Seminar “Discipline and Punish” by Michel Foucault – Part 1
Discipline and Punish Seminar, 50 Years Later: Contributions to the Social Sciences
*Prof. Dr. Marcos César Alvarez is a sociologist and a tenured professor in the Department of Sociology of the School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at the University of São Paulo (USP). He is involved in teaching, research, and outreach activities related to the sociology of punishment and social control. He is the coordinator of the Center for the Study of Violence (NEV) at USP.
*Marcelo Batista Nery is a researcher at think tank of ABES and the Oscar Sala Chair at the Institute of Advanced Studies of USP (IEA-USP), coordinator of Technology Transfer and Head of the PAHO/WHO Collaborating Center (BRA-61) of the Center for the Study of Violence at the University of São Paulo. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Association.
Notice: The opinion expressed in this article is the responsibility of its authors and not of ABES – Brazilian Association of Software Companies
Article originally published on the IT Forum website https://itforum.com.br/colunas/ecos-foucault-seguranca-ia/
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