Following Great Britain’s lead in setting up an Orwellian, surveillance-camera-ridden society (see here: http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=08032002-020813-4448r , and check out these chilling, official British government posters boasting of their “watchfulness”: http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/Big_Brother_is_watching_sml.jpg
http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/watchful_eyes_bus_03_sml.jpg
http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/Croyden_500_CCTV_sml.jpg ), Chicago has now decided to follow suit, creating a linked network of over 2000 surveillance cameras: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/print_090904_ap_ns_camera.html
Perhaps I’m naive, but I find this a very alarming development; Britons have generally been less attached to their personal freedoms than North Americans have (even here in Canada, our government can’t get away with all that the British government has), and so while what’s gone on over there is disturbing, it’s not too surprising, alas; but for it to happen in the U.S., where people have traditionally cherished their liberty greatly, really shows how bad things have gotten…
(two more images from the U.K.)
(Here’s a larger image of that first poster I linked above:
http://tinyurl.com/6hyfd
And here’s what the London Buses’ website looked like two years ago:
http://tinyurl.com/663cp
– it now looks a lot less ominous:
http://tinyurl.com/6sard )
The stories suggest it’s not so effective
I can’t help but wonder whether the effect will be to make it ever easier to nail generally law-abiding people for minor infractions, failure to wear seat belts or whatever, while giving someone with bad intentions who takes minimal precautions an advantage.
Rem tene, verba sequentur.
Absolutely…
… it doesn’t work to their desired effect, presumably, yet nevertheless, governments will cling irrationally to ineffective programs, e.g. America’s Drug War, the U.K.’s “gun control” policies, Canada’s socialist medicare system, just because they can’t admit they were wrong, and/or because it’s the only way they can conceive, ideologically, of properly doing things.
I guess I fear such things may be long-lasting, due to governmental inertia, and the usual ratchet effect of government – once a certain amount of personal liberty is ceded to the State, it never, ever, gives it back willingly…
Even if a given program is ineffective, unless the government suffers real credibility loss as a result, then that program may last a long time…
Finally, the ACLU is doing something useful…
Here.
cell phones as environmental sensors?
Thus saith http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/0805/honicky_print.html Berkeley U Engineering; alas, I fear it will only lead to increased tyranny from Big Brother, able to monitor us ever more closely…
I wanna be in pictures!
Hollywood is now http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-watching28oct28,0,6034196,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines following Chicago, New Orleans, Washington D.C., and the U.K.