Life in a Surveillance Society

Governments throughout history have maximized their power by pointing to threats, internal and external, as justifications for “increased security measures” -- also known to some as “diminishing freedoms.” The issue is not whether the threats are real or not – there are plenty of real threats in the world, from malignant bacteria to nuclear weapons – but the way in which we respond to them. Does battening down society’s hatches by limiting mobility and surveilling the populace even work? Does it make us “safer”?

One of the consequences of the 9/11 attack was to bring issues of freedom vs. security to the fore once again. The international boogeyman of communism having been half-slain with the demise of the USSR (China, once the junior partner, is holding on by a thread), the Islamofascist threat ratcheted up the terror to provide yet another common enemy. Let’s take a look at how two Western nations, Britain and the U.S., responded to the threat.

You’re on TV!

The British can now exclaim with egalitarian glee that all of its subjects (they aren’t “citizens,” you know) are TV stars. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they are all on TV. London, by various accounts, has some four to six million close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras keeping tabs on its 7.5 million inhabitants. They are getting close to having one camera for each person. Now there’s equality!

But has the constant surveillance of the general public helped keep crime and terrorism in check? Apparently, in a few “terrorism cases and several high-profile murders, London’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras have played a key role” -- but only in “reconstructing what happened,” and only “after the fact.”

“CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure,” according to Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville, head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office of Scotland Yard. According to his speech at a London conference last May, Neville considers the entire CCTV project to have been “an utter fiasco: Only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV.” Not very good results for a system that was sold as video security for “law-abiding citizens.”

People not “fearful” enough

In an unintended bit of Orwellian candor, the Inspector admitted that Londoners have “no fear of CCTV.” Instead of being on their best behavior for the eagle-eyed constables working in the numerous “monitoring stations” in the city, people appear to be going about their usual business, whether felonious or innocent. Neville says they do so because they know that “the cameras are not working.”

Actual camera failures are soon corrected, so in that sense they are “working.” What the good Inspector meant was that, in court, the quality of the images is often less than what is required for a positive identification. In addition, investigators are not willing to slog through hours of video to prosecute petty crimes.

The verdict? London’s CCTV experiment has failed in its stated goal, but has mitigated the particular failure by having a general effect with which the government is quite pleased. There is little discussion of the principle at stake -- that is, liberty -- and the tension between it and security that has been at the root of Americans’ distrust of government surveillance efforts.

North American inroads

That innate distrust may be a North American trait, as our neighbors to the north, the Canadians, are still individualistic enough (or enough of them are) to at least stoke a national debate on the topic. The Toronto police are experimenting with CCTV right now, and the city’s Transit Commission is completing work on an $18 million camera system it claims will “capture every one” of its “2.5 million daily users on video.” And the op-ed columns and letters to the editor are fairly blazing with controversy. Well, a small, polite blaze, at any rate.

Unfortunately, judging from the column inches devoted to each side of the issue, it appears that Canadians in general, and the “privileged press” in particular, are solidly behind the notion of surveillance. Apparently they believe that they will find a “nice Canadian way” of doing it that respects rights, uses renewable resources and takes flattering portraits.

Americans, of course, are another breed entirely, a breed of a thousand contrarian bloodlines. As the asylum and haven of the world, our national character has a wide streak of individualism, and an instinctive distrust of power and people who like wielding it. Still, surveillance cameras, traffic cams and other CCTV installations are proliferating here, too, and are sold as examples of “Yankee ingenuity” and the natural evolution of “good government.”

Refining the terms of debate

The important thing for supporters of privacy rights to recognize is that video security technology has not reached the power-to-price ratio that would allow widespread installation in any Western country. Higher-resolution cameras and better lenses raise the cost substantially, while the low-end optics used in police surveillance cameras, at least in London, capture images that usually don’t help capture the crooks.

Opponents of government snooping can use utilitarian arguments now, as well as philosophical ones. The fact is, the cameras don’t do what they’re advertised to do, notwithstanding that, in America, what they are asked to do seems quite Constitutionally questionable. And the utilitarian argument that the cameras don’t work anyway does not counter the pro-surveillance argument that newer, better, more powerful and even cheaper technology is becoming available.

Therefore, opposing surveillance on merely utilitarian grounds is a losing proposition, especially with the pace of technological progress today. Principled opposition is required. Benjamin Franklin’s great insight on freedom vs. security, having been mauled and misquoted by so many writers and politicos in the last few years, is here in its original form for your consideration:

The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.

Compromise is not always possible. That is the challenging subtext here, a message that speaks to the sense of personal responsibility that is fast vanishing in the world. Of course, video surveillance itself is neither good nor evil. It is the application that counts. In the hands of government, surveillance cameras will end up doing damage, great and small. In the hands of individuals, however, they can be a true boon and have various uses.

A thousand or a million or even 20 million CCTV cameras installed in the U.S., hither and yon and under the control of a vast range of different people, shouldn’t raise a single hair on the back of a dedicated civil libertarian’s neck. It’s when all of the cameras are centralized and controlled by one entity that people, and not just civil rights activists, should get concerned.

From concern, one should move to education. Read all you can about the subject and stay informed on what local, regional and state governments are doing in this regard, in addition to the ongoing shenanigans in Washington, D.C. Whatever you ultimately decide in this matter --and you may or may not agree with everything in this article -- you will at least be an informed participant in an important national discussion. We have to be able to hash out all these issues without reaching for our opponents’ throats.

As long as we can still “agree to disagree” there is hope. But if it takes the courts disagreeing with the executive branch -- here with a lower case “e” as it deserves -- to stop police-state BS in its tracks, well, hey! That would give me a little bit of hope. Indeed it would.

A Big Staff Doing Big Stuff with a Big Stick

You’re in power – in a democratic or social democratic nation, a socialist or "soft authoritarian" one-party state, an out-of-touch monarchy, pretty much anywhere but an out-and-out fratricidal dictatorship – and you like it, so you want to stay in power. Whatever the form of government, the method is the same: Make people dependent upon you, and you’ll have control over them. Exert control for long enough, and the social sinews of a free society – responsibility, industriousness, creativity, perseverance, initiative – go flaccid in decaying nations and never develop in oppressed ones, and many people prefer to “go along to get along” wherever they are, anyhow.

In America today, set up by astutely manipulative PR and roped in by the brain-numbing verbal bonbons of Demopublican robocandidates, people obligingly vote themselves into as comfy a cocoon as their 50-plus-percent overall tax rate will buy them, with costs ever spiraling due to inflation, imputed interest, corporate welfare, a laundry list of kickbacks and the general economic wear and tear that results from foisting an overlarge, labyrinthine protection racket such as the U.S. government onto 300 million people who, in large part (and in the service of a large number of diverse ideologies, religions and philosophies) wish to be left alone to devise their own best lives and maybe hold on to a buck or two, okay, can you dig that?

Whoa. Yep, that was one sentence, all right. Your brain may be out of breath. Check now.

You all right?

Okay, then, back to the harangue: Dependent people lose their freedom skills. When that happens, the government becomes central to people’s lives, exerting life-controlling powers as it aims to know everything about everyone and handle every detail of daily life. Did I say “benignly”? Benignly, of course, because the intent, not the result, is the measure of success. Our wanna-be rulers wanna be nice rulers. Mostly nice, anyway. This is the kind of “nice” I mean:

“We put people first. We even give them money. We need them in our corner when we shake down the tobacco companies. Of course, some backward types don’t like the fact that the U. S. government is litigating against legal corporations selling legal products that the state, at several levels, subsidizes – but, hey, there’s no accounting for taste. Which is okay, because in this Administration we have no taste for accounting, either! We figure we owe the money to ourselves anyway, right? So not only can we use the power of the state to bend people to our will and dispense the most crass patronage – we can charge it!”

This is, without fanciful slogans and multimedia soundtrack, the Democratic Party platform. But the regnant Republicans have been just as bad the last eight years. They are not even quite an opposition party; more like unindicted co-conspirators.

So, the heck with the two institutionalized parties, and their orchestrated media squabbles, their sound bites and their news-screwing. The chance of either major party adding a “Leave People Alone” plank to its platform is zero, I’m afraid. From a recognized, revered trait of Americans, acknowledged in Supreme Court opinions, the desire to be left alone has gone from quite laudable to almost illegal in two or three generations. The sheer weight, breadth and depth of state intrusion into our everyday lives, unconscionably vast and pervasive, cannot but smother initiative and spontaneity, cripple industry and industriousness, and either engender resistance or develop dependence in people.

But now, just to move the paradigm forward and to the right a tad, forget intentions, good or otherwise; forget policy pronouncements and political posturing; let’s talk simple, crushing weight. Sheer bulk, and sheer bulk alone. Might may not make right, but it certainly can be counted on to make trouble, just by its nature – its large nature.

First off, everyone of every political flavor should be able to agree on a few very basic statements of fact – plain and simple facts, not interpretations, not policy implications or political imprecations. Two of those, certainly, are that the U. S. government is (1) big and (2) powerful.

Add up the employees of the federal and state and local governments, and the budgets, and the buildings, and the company cars, and the copiers, coffee machines, and dusty banker boxes that dot the bureaucratic landscape, and you’ve got a big bunch of – well, staff and stuff, I suppose. Really quite large quantities of staff and stuff, frankly.

Who could argue with that? On top of that hardware heap you have, what? – three-and-a-half million federal employees alone, not counting the armed services? Plus a few million more state and local clerks, councilmen, sheriffs and wardens. So it’s not a value judgment or a political position to say merely that the U. S. government is big. As for this latter part of the proposition – defining “powerful” – we offer up just a few words. Hiroshima. Gulf War. Kosovo. Iraq. No analysis, interpretation, spin or B.S. Whatever your viewpoint, the U. S. has had some big-time, first-place bombfests, and some are still underway.

Big and powerful. A big staff doing big stuff with a big stick. No matter how much the national greatness neocons want to claim him, I don’t think Teddy Roosevelt would sign on to their Bismarckian program.

I’m not sure Bismarck would.

Enough Already with the Groupthink

Just to take a rest from the faux profundity of Campaign/Damn Pain 2008, I thought I would ruminate on how lazy people can be in attributing blame to groups – nations, cultures, races – that should properly fall on individuals. If you think race, racism, racialism, and race-baiting may be playing a role in the current presidential race, you won't be wasting the next few minutes, promise.

So, well, anyway ... I got an e-mail recently in which the writer, T, broached among other subjects that of Lenin's financiers, the money men who not only conspired (yes, the 'c' word) with the Bolsheviks but paid all the bills. He was wondering whether anyone was brave enough to tell the truth, to wit, that "the Jews...bankrolled and led the communist takeover of Russia."

I wrote back, saying much of what you see here under a headline now. About 300 words into the letter, I told T that he'd have to wait for the rest of it; my quick reply was quickly turning into an essay. I was starting to warm to the topic of group identities, and what sloppy labels they were for attributing praise or blame when it is particular, individual actions that, in sum, make the world turn.

I, for one, never appreciated Dan Rather saying "America bombed Kosovo today" when that hotspot was hot, as I, for one, was nowhere near the place. America didn’t do that. Russians in general didn’t overthrow the Czar; certain Russians, and certain foreigners, did. Likewise, "the Jews" didn’t bankroll Lenin, although I did understand and agree with T’s underlying position. But conflating the Jewish race with specific Jewish financiers achieves a sweeping generalization that fairly begs to be dismissed out of hand. Nevertheless, despite some rhetorical laxness, there was no indication of racial animosity whatsoever in T's letter; it was all quite matter of fact.

There is a distinction between (a) the Jews as a group committing some remarkable act, like, say, crossing the parted Red Sea and (b) certain elite Jewish people, not representative of the average Jew, being integrally involved in some other remarkable act, in this case the financing of the Bolsheviks. Frankly, following their flight from Egypt, I don't know how many more times "the Jews" acted with such unanimity; "the Jews" didn't even found Israel, inasmuch as in 1948 there were more Jews outside that new nation than inside.

And back in 1918? Yes, of course Lenin had Jewish financiers among his international, internationalist cadres. He never mobilized the working class in what became the numerous slave states of the Soviet Union, but he certainly managed to mobilize legions of the rich and disaffected around the world. Including, of course, some Jews.

However, I don't think the internationalists held any convention to gauge, debate or build support among world Jewry for their financing of Lenin's power grab in Russia. The very fact that Lenin's sealed train passed unmolested across borders of bloodsoaked adversaries, during a dangerously anarchic period at the end of World War I hostilities, suggests influence and power available to very, very few. Behind Lenin were some of the richest, most powerful, most organized, most ruthless, most focused men of the last several centuries. And, yes, some were Jews. And many were not.

The real common denominators here are, as in most of man's egregious escapades, the creed of greed. A creed of rapacious greed, powermongering, coercion and control unites totalitarians of all self-descriptions. Dictatorship is amenable to the trappings of either racialist nationalism (Nazi Germany) or revolutionary internationalism (Soviet Union) without deviating from the standard formula: central planning, total regulation, nationalized property controlled in various degrees and manners, pervasive secret police apparatus, paramilitary law enforcement, wars on poverty and hoarding and overpopulation and drugs and hateful thinking... Hmmm. I had better move on before I get depressed.

Anyway, race and religion can also unite people. But right thinking still has to be in evidence, and deviation is not tolerated. So, group actions, both in tribal cultures and contemporary America, are still predicated on shared creed; absent that, groups dissolve. It is true that some movements add healthy doses of nationalism or ethnicity -- the Puerto Rican "terrorists" recently in the news profess a strange brew of socialism, anti-Americanism, get-whitey resentment and ethnic solidarity -- but this demonstrates that one's creed can be fervently held, and effectively preached, even if it's as simple as, "Okay, it's you and me against the world."

One could argue, I suppose, that "you and me against the world" has historically been the most effective motivating creed for aggressive social movements and conqueror nations. But it is still individuals who respond to demagogues, cult leaders, celebrities and heroes, and who are motivated to group action through a variety of methods. If groups acted monolithically, there would be no need for leaders; but history is replete with stories of exceptional people galvanizing enough of their contemporaries to accomplish things on a truly grand scale -- not all good, necessarily. But behind the acts of what seems a race or a nation are thousands or millions of individual decisions; specific conspiracies for personal gain, like financing coups, must by definition be ascribed to individuals, acting in concert or not.

We must always think in terms of individuals, NOT groups. The inability and unwillingness to do so in American society, jurisprudence and culture is at the root of many of our ills. Groupthink is deadening, to the individual spirit and thence to the nation; individualism brings the liberty of independent action balanced by the social contract of individual responsibility. And from independent action come new ideas, astonishing works of art, amazing acts of generosity, true sacrifice and compassion, competition and cooperation.

Progress, in other words.

As my correspondent suggested in that letter, we should name names, first among yesteryear’s Soviet elite, then among today's corporate-statist media elite, and see what's what, who's who and, most importantly to some people, who is what. T believes many will be Jewish.

I'm not so sure. But I am sure that it doesn't matter much; when gauging threats to my well-being, race is a far less accurate predictor than ideology. Tell me that there's a Jew looking for me, and that could mean anyone from the likes of Milton Friedman (yay) to Mickey Cohen (yikes).

But if Agents of the Republicratic New World Order are after me, it does't matter if these brain police are Catholic, Jewish, atheist or animist.

They will lock me up.

And, yep, they will take my wallet.

Campaign/Damn Pain 2008

There is some legitimate concern – which is another way of saying that at least one or two high-profile liberals are concerned – as to whether or not Barry H. Obama's mother was an American citizen. Dual citizenship may be problematic, as well.

John-Boy McCain, old authoritarian gasbag that he is, was born in U.S. territory, so he passes the geography part of the test. However, isn't there something in the Constitution about being born in the same geologic age as the election year? Is a Jurassic President legit?

Getting back to the Hero of a Thousand Races (hey, it's a Joseph Campbell joke, go Google it or something), there's one particularly funny thing about Obie-One's candidacy, and it proves a point I've been trying to make for years. Collectivists by and large don't believe in religion – but they certainly believe in saviors. And how nice for them that the White Knight is black! The large contingent of self-flagellating guilt-trippers among the ranks of the Neu Left (spelling intentional) are going to be positively orgasmic on November 5th.

I predict a wave of shuddering, ecstatic, essentially spiritual experiences as American liberals unite in one big, communal climax. They've peed in their pants so many times in the past that it should prove a refreshing change of pace.