Do We Really Want Big Brother Watching Us?

By John W. Whitehead

“There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.... You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984

We live in a surveillance age.

From the biggest city to the smallest town, we have succumbed to the siren-song promise that surveillance cameras will not only stop crime, they will actually make us safer.

New York City, for example, is estimated to have over 4,000 surveillance cameras. Other big cities using these cameras include the District of Columbia, Boston, Baltimore and Chicago. The Mayberry-size town of Bellows Falls, Vt., with its eight full-time police officers, plans to install 16 surveillance cameras. Even the quaint college town of Charlottesville, Va., where I live and work, is considering installing 30 surveillance cameras in its small downtown mall area to monitor its citizens. (Full Article)