PRISM and the 'Panopticon' effect.

The Panopticon was an institutional building designed by 18th century English Philosopher Jeremey Bentham.

The concept of the design is to allow a watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without their being able to tell whether they are being watched or not.

Now this institution was usually a prison, where inmates would regulate their behaviour based on the knowledge that they could be being watched.

Bentham himself described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”[1] Elsewhere, he described the Panopticon prison as “a mill for grinding rogues honest”

Nice.

critical analyses of internet practice have suggested that the internet allows for a panopticon form of observation.[40] ISPs are able to track users' activities, while user-generated content means that daily social activity may be recorded and broadcast online

en.wikipedia.org...
www.surveillance-and-society.org...(3)/editorial.pdf
I think its an interesting comparison to the 18th Century philosophy of a prison, where one is aware they could be being watched at any time to the current state of affairs with the Internet and its monitoring.
What effect this will have on the Internet and society remains to be seen, but panopiticism is a theory of social control and one that explains much of the philosophies behind the modern surveillance state.