RICH LOWRY WANTS BIG BROTHER TO WATCH WHAT YOU DO: ONE NATION UNDER SURVEILLANCE

Snave's note: I posted this article as a way to provide an opposing view from time to time. I don't agree with very much of what this author says. He's a fairly notoriously cranky right-wing pundit, as evidenced by what he writes below (check out the attacks on civil libertarians). I think that what he says, in principle, makes sense for those who are constantly afraid, that is, why not surrender some of our liberties if it will make us safer?

"Caught on Tape"
Rich Lowry, National Review
The suicidal otherworldliness of ACLU-style civil libertarianism.

The four would-be suicide bombers of the botched July 21 attacks in London have a big problem. They were caught on videotape. Their images have been broadcast in Britain and around the world, making their apprehension astronomically more likely than if they had escaped undetected.

For this, we have security cameras to thank. London has half a million of them. According to one estimate, a person wandering around London will be filmed 300 times in a day. The city is a pioneer of a trend toward video surveillance that is also sweeping the United States and provoking howls from civil libertarians whose internal clocks are set to make a reference to "1984" every 15 minutes or so. Given the choice, apparently, they would prefer not to have the video of the July 21 bombers, which is an indication of the suicidal otherworldliness of ACLU-style civil libertarianism.

Opponents of video cameras unroll various arguments about the cameras. They complain that the cameras are intrusive and a violation of privacy. But how is it possible to violate someone’s privacy in a park or a subway car? People have a right to privacy only where they have an expectation of privacy, and that is not in public places where things they do are susceptible to viewing by dozens of pairs of eyes. No one should expect pristine privacy while walking in a subway tunnel, let alone while he is running away after having attempted to kill and maim people.

If they can’t brandish the Fourth Amendment, civil libertarians get down to practical policing and claim that cameras don’t really do anything to prevent crime; they only occasionally help solve crime after the fact. Even if this were true, solving one terror attack alone — and therefore perhaps unraveling networks that would attack in the future — makes the cameras worth it.
Cameras won’t deter suicide bombers — what will? — but they can tamp down other criminal activity. Cameras in Britain are credited with discouraging the IRA bombing campaign in the 1990s. On a less serious front, San Francisco — one of many jurisdictions, including New York, Houston and New Jersey, that have cameras in their train systems — saw vandalism drastically decline on subway cars after the installation of surveillance cameras.

Some cities have turned to cameras in high-crime areas, mounting them to watch activities in parks and on dangerous streets. The Los Angeles Times reported in October 2004, “Earlier this year, police began monitoring seven cameras around MacArthur Park in the city’s Westlake district, watching in amazement as crime plummeted, gangs, drug dealers and pimps disappeared, and families with children began returning to the 40-acre expanse in one of the city’s poorest areas.” Chicago has used cameras to make drug busts in real time.

Then there is the last resort of civil libertarians. When no real harm can be demonstrated, they always discern a subtle “chilling effect.” “When citizens are being watched by the authorities,” says Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union, “they are more self-conscious and less freewheeling.” But urban areas, where the cameras are proliferating, are not notably bastions of inhibited behavior. City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald, who is nation’s foremost critic of the excesses of the ACLU, writes, “The only people whom public cameras inhibit are criminals; they liberate the law-abiding public.” When they move a camera out of a troubled neighborhood, Chicago police now get complaints from neighbors, who want pimps and drug dealers to be decidedly inhibited.

The priority of a certain class of civil libertarians is apparently to protect Americans from nonexistent threats to their liberty at the expense of protecting them from real threats to their safety. The New York Civil Liberties Union is considering a federal lawsuit over New York’s new policy of randomly searching the backpacks of subway passengers. Only if terrorists can get on mass-transit systems without any risk of their bags being searched or their images being recorded will they finally rest easy.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.


Snave's other notes: While I would have to agree that people shouldn't expect "pristine privacy" in a subway, how would Americans respond to the feeling they are constantly being watched, in any public place? If Lowry is representative of the party that says it doesn't trust big government, why does he want our government watching everyone? Britain is a place where the government controls a heck of a lot more than it does here in the U.S. If Lowry wants us to be more like Britain, I find that to be a surprising opinion coming from such a conservative mind as his.

Lowry says the threats extensive video surveillance would make to liberty are nonexistent. I say that once the government puts cameras in the busiest places, it won't be long before they have them all over, including inside some places most people should expect privacy. I should be careful, I suppose, as this may well be fallacial logic on my part... seeing that it's close to the same type of paranoid logic anti-gun-control folks use when they say that once all the guns are registered, the government will come and take them away.

Then on the other hand, Lowry pooh-poohs "1984". I wonder if he has ever read the book? He writes with a smug sense of satisfaction, as if he believe he is allied with the correct side for when-and-if the surveillance begins. He would be on the side with the power, at least, as he is already apparently an advocate for such governmental power.

Benjamin Franklin said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety..." It appears that Lowry would disagree with Ben. Tsk, tsk.