Cameras everywhere. As we struggle as a society to come to some resolution in our minds of how much surveillance is too much surveillance, there is a case to look at which points out the usefulness of cameras everywhere.
As Law Enforcement agencies fanned out in search of Sandra Coke, who was missing from Oakland, they changed search venues of interest on a dime. Why? They had surveillance of her car crossing the Carquinez Bridge. That started them in another direction. Add to that, they got camera shots of the suspect in the case filling up the victim’s car with gas at another location.
There are massive traffic control centers in the Bay Area and other metropolitan areas. All those cameras you see out there…see you. At the same time, the victim’s daughter was using the “Find My iPhone” app to help law enforcement track the path of travel.
So, it makes sense that on one level we can hate the thought that we are photographed almost everywhere we travel. Isn’t the freedom of movement one of the tenets of a free state? Isn’t that one of the things we would fear if somehow our government was overthrown and we became a totalitarian state? Big Brother. Does it bother you, that government can track you by picking up the ping from your phone? It knows where you go and it takes your picture.
In my mind, it should bother all of us. But flip it and take it to its most dramatic. What if Sandra Coke was still alive? What if police and FBI, while combing thru all the surveillance footage, spotted her car, or the gas station camera ID on the suspect? What if law enforcement could respond, just in the nick of time and save her?
Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way, but the chances would be much slimmer without the cameras. Tough one huh? What if surveillance cameras could stop the punks who demonstrate and vandalize businesses time after time, or people who shoot guns at other people? It would be right there in video. Is that a bad thing? Isn’t it helpful?
In this case, it should at least aid the prosecution in making sure the right person is on trial, and is convicted and sent away forever. One of my favorite sayings is “life is a series of tradeoffs.” Do we trade off our unwatched freedom of movement for better and more efficient law enforcement? Wow…what Makes Sense?
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