Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier and most members of the D.C. Council tout the crime-fighting benefits of cameras without expressing a trace of reservation about turning the city into one massive holding cell that is under 24-hour surveillance.
To be fair, council member Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat, is not comfortable with the celluloid intrusion on the residents of the city, no matter how favorable the statistics may be. So let”s take the principle of cameras as a crime-fighting tool. Let”s say, as proponents suggest, that cameras are an effective deterrent. If so, where would our lawmakers break from the principle, and break they eventually would if the issue of cameras were extrapolated to the limit? If a camera on one street corner in a neighborhood is a positive, why not have a camera on every street corner in the city? And if the intent is to curb violent crime and felonies, why stop with street corners? What about all the alleyways in the city? Are they not useful thoroughfares to the criminal element? If our public servants are so convinced of the lifesaving propensity of cameras, they should not feel constricted or uneasy about bringing a camera to a block near you.
And if they can cut crime and save lives in this fashion, it would be hard to argue against cameras being installed in all vehicles registered in the city. That would be especially good if you own a vehicle that is favored by thieves. That would be possibly bad if you are inclined to drive home after having two glasses of wine with dinner.
And, really, if one is motivated to take the principle to its ultimate level — cameras in private residences — there is no doubt that even more crimes could be prevented. Domestic abuse would drop dramatically. Trafficking in drugs certainly would be more difficult. The home-invasion artists would be put out of business.
Imagine a camera on every street, in every alleyway, in every vehicle and in every residence. The amount of nefarious activities that could be foiled by a crime-fighting team taking its orders from an all-knowing eye in the sky is almost unthinkable.
This is not to suggest the mayor, police chief and pro-camera council members would be comfortable with this scenario. In fact, they probably would be incredibly uncomfortable with this version of Big Brother.
Yet they should know that movements start bit by bit, in incremental fashion. Stick a camera in a high-crime neighborhood and see a statistical drop in crime. Hmm. Great. Let”s deploy a few more cameras. Then let”s deploy a few thousand more. Twenty years from now, with so many of our public servants being mere memories by then, the notion of an all-knowing camera system that monitors your every move just might not seem so far-fetched.
By then, we would have been desensitized to the cameras in our midst. If 10,000 cameras are good, 100,000 are even better.
Just think of the potential revenue to a city that could increase its capacity to fine the citizenry for all sorts of minor infractions, such as jaywalking and littering. There would be your mug in a photograph confirming that you did what you did, just as you now receive notices that show your vehicle running a red light or speeding.
We”ll grant the mayor and his supporters their statistics. No argument there. But a free society pays an awful price once it starts to go down this intrusive path. One day, in the distant future, you wake up and have only the illusion of freedom and privacy.
This is a collision of the public good — a public”s right to be safe versus a public”s right to privacy, if not the right to do the occasional stupid thing and not be called out on it.
We all have had our stupid moments that, thankfully, were not caught on camera.
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