Anelli dell’invisibilità, anelli del potere. Alla ricerca di un equilibrio tra sorveglianza e democrazia a partire da Platone, Tolkien e Bentham.

Today, surveillance perpetrated by a few invisible entities on a large number of citizens is a widespread practice. However, in the field of surveillance studies, this situation is perceived as a threat to the smooth functioning of democratic regimes. Through this paper, three paradigmatic figures of rings capable of granting invisibility will be examined: from the reflections of Plato, Tolkien and Jeremy Bentham, the bursting and ambiguous power of command inherent in the faculty of seeing without being seen will emerge. Through a path that winds its way from the myth of Gige to the structure of the Panopticon, an attempt will be made to show how the visual universe can constitute, on a socio-legal level, not only the prerequisite for a despotic degeneration of political systems, but also the starting point for imagining a more cohesive democracy. By adopting a theoretical approach that progressively unites myth, literature and legal-philosophical reflection, it will be possible to provide concrete support to a current of thought, minority at the legislative level, but which, today supported by some key figures in the field of law computer science, promises to make it possible to design a new balance between surveillance and democracy.