Townhall...
Transparency
and totalitarianism
By Paul Jacob
6/27/2011
The
camera eye is not minatory. It is
not, by itself, menacing, or evil. It merely aims, focuses, and (if the
mechanisms behind it are sound) records.
And
yet, in some contexts, it seems
alien, like the red orb of Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or invasive,
like the
public cameras all over Britain, and increasingly in these United
States.
Personally,
I’ve never minded the
cameras in 7-Eleven, or the uptown mall. I know they are recording my
sauntering gait through their purview. But, they record everybody, and
I am
sure that the eyes behind those cameras glaze over at my torso and
shadow.
Nothing to see here. I move along. Somewhere, in secret rooms now or
later, the
eyes move on, too.
Some
folks get freaked out about this,
use words like “Big Brother.” But I’m afraid my suspicions rise only
when those
cameras are run by governments. The local mall presents no threat. They
want me
to be safe, so that I can buy more stuff.
I
wish I could say the same of our
governments.
But,
something there is in government
that doesn’t respect my autonomy. Because too many laws are bad laws,
and
because the people enforcing those laws have monopoly privileges, too
often
those in authority turn antagonistic.
In
the context of our
“throw-the-book-at-em” culture, I don’t want our streets and byways to
be
filled by government cameras, constantly spying.
It
turns out, most voting Americans
don’t want that, either. In every jurisdiction in the union where
red-light
cameras have been put up for a vote, they’ve been voted down.
The
red-light camera is, in case you
are not familiar, one of those ostensible safety measures that turn
invasive
and malign pretty easily. At first blush, you might think that an
increase in
eyes on intersections would be a good thing. A lot of cars crash at
intersections. Too many people die from such crashes.
But
it becomes quite clear that the
innocent cause of “safety first and foremost” doesn’t stay in focus.
Many
locales begin to issue citations for minor infractions to make the
cameras pay.
Worse yet, many municipalities with red-light cameras reduced their
yellow-light durations after the cameras were installed. This, to
increase the
number of people nabbed, along with their checkbooks.
Typical
government indecency, that.
It’s why Americans increasingly distrust those in power. Something
billed as a
safety measure quickly becomes a shake-down racket.
And,
believe me, Americans do feel
shaken. Shaken down. Nickeled and dimed.
But
there is a deeper reason for
Americans’ increasing disgust with government spying, and today’s
red-light
camera issue perfectly illuminates it. Some rules we want strictly
enforced,
because the harm done and rights violated are clear and unassailable.
We want
every murderer caught; we want every fraudster tracked down.
But
traffic rules are there to provide
some ground-rules for traffic that help us on average. If you roll
through a
stop sign at three in the morning, in lonely streets, no harm is
possible.
Rolling through them at rush hour, with school buses on the road,
that’s
another story. Between these two extremes, where the rule has scant
probability
of doing good and where the rule is almost 100 percent necessary, there
is a
whole spectrum of probabilities.
And,
in the context of varying
probability of danger even when motorists (or pedestrians, for that
matter)
fail to comply completely, most infractions of the law will yield no
harm.
So,
in this context, piecemeal,
intermittent enforcement seems apt. If you are sometimes caught for
your
carelessness and inattention, you tend to be fine with that. But if you
are
caught every time, it seems way out of whack with the danger, since in
most
cases, the probability will be low.
There’s
a certain type of mind, of
course, that doesn’t understand this probabilistic, random aspect to
life, and
will always push for constant enforcement . . . and take every instance
of
injury or fatality as an example of the need for total enforcement.
Trouble
is, that kind of impulse
yields to totalitarian oversight. There is a reason why voters vote
down
red-light cameras. It’s not just simple self-interest. It’s not
heedlessness of
safety rules.
It’s
hatred for totalitarianism.
That’s
why the people are fighting
back. The zero tolerance mentality that infected America from the Nixon
era to
the present day is still with us, but is increasingly under attack. It
is being
battled at the fundamental level, where we debate “what is the role for
government in society?”
On
the other hand, the citizens’ lens
has also exploded in the YouTube culture. It’s not just Big Brother
that has
cameras. We all do. In our phones, in our shirt pockets, in our cars.
And
we are using them. Recording much
of what we see, including police overkill, including public servant
misconduct.
The
age started with the Rodney King
recording, where a dangerous motorist was brutally stomped on by police
— many
police — and the event was videotaped. The immediate results were less
than
pleasant, since much of the fallout diverged on the basis of race.
But
since then, as private video
sharing has grown in popularity, conduct and misconduct by public
servants is
seeing the light of day. We are reaching the Age of Transparency.
Predictably,
the authorities are
striking back.
Arrests
of citizens recording police
actions is one of the most interesting ongoing stories of the day.
Every week a
new example pops into view. Last week, police at a public meeting
arrested two
journalists — one for photographing the event, the other for
video-recording
the first journalist’s arrest. The charges initially brought against
the two
were absurd, as Judge Andrew Napolitano pointed out on his great Fox
program
Freedom Watch. Neither behaved in a “disorderly” way (you can see for
yourself,
on YouTube), and, since the event was a public meeting, neither engaged
in
“unlawful entry.” Napolitano asked “what kind of a government do we
have that
watches us with cameras everywhere we go, but recoils in horror and
uses force
when we try to watch the government with cameras?”
The
previous week’s example was police
abandoning a nabbed motorist to arrest a woman “making them feel
unsafe” by
recording them from the safety of her own lawn.
Hysterical
police-state over-reaction
won’t go away until officials and police realize that people do have
First
Amendment rights, and that they are, themselves, civil servants, not
Lords of
the Realm.
Government
cameras on citizens?
Dangerous. Citizen lenses trained on government? Essential safety
devices.
Read
it at Townhall
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