[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: The Great Unwatched

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Dedicated to Mr. Protopapa with a subtitle added by me: "1984 Come Alive"

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The Great Unwatched

February 18, 2002 

By WILLIAM SAFIRE


 

WASHINGTON -- Stipulated: The protection of our capital,
its monuments and centers of authority, is a vital national
interest. 

Early in our history, when faced with a potential rebellion
of unpaid officers, one of our leaders employed an
uncharacteristic emotional trick - pretending to be going
blind - to appeal to the infuriated military men not to
march on the capital. He soon had them in tears and in
hand. 

In another time, another leader risked all by turning the
capital's defense over to the man most opposed to his
political aims, gambling that he could later overcome the
nation's gratitude to a man on horseback. 

In our time, after the Pentagon was hit, the White House
targeted and the Capitol anthraxed, D.C. again saw itself
besieged. But now, in terror of an external threat, our
leaders are protecting our capital at the cost of every
American's personal freedom. 

Surveillance is in the saddle. Responding to the latest
Justice Department terror alert, Washington police opened
the Joint Operation Command Center of the Synchronized
Operations Command Complex (S.O.C.C.). In it, 50 officials
monitor a wall of 40 video screens showing images of
travelers, drivers, residents and pedestrians. 

These used to be the Great Unwatched, free people
conducting their private lives; now they are under close
surveillance by hundreds of hidden cameras. A zoom lens
enables the watchers to focus on the face of a tourist
walking toward the Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial.


The monitoring system is already linked to 200 cameras in
public schools. The watchers plan to expand soon with an
equal number in the subways and parks. A private firm
profits by photographing cars running red lights; those
images will also join the surveillance network. 

Private cameras in banks and the lobbies and elevators of
apartment buildings and hotels will join the system, and
residents of nursing homes and hospitals can look forward
to an electronic eye in every room. A commercial camera
atop a department store in Georgetown catches the faces of
shoppers entering malls, to be plugged into omnipresent
S.O.C.C. 

Digital images of the captured faces can be flashed around
the world in an instant on the Internet. Married to
face-recognition technology and tied in to public and
private agencies around the world, an electronic library of
hundreds of millions of faces will be created. Terrorists
and criminals - as well as unhappy spouses, runaway teens,
hermits and other law-abiding people who want to drop out
of society for a while - will have no way to get a fresh
start. 

Is this the kind of world we want? The promise is greater
safety; the tradeoff is government control of individual
lives. Personal security may or may not be enhanced by this
all-seeing eye and ear, but personal freedom will surely be
sharply curtailed. To be watched at all times, especially
when doing nothing seriously wrong, is to be afflicted with
a creepy feeling. That is what is felt by a convict in an
always- lighted cell. It is the pervasive, inescapable
feeling of being unfree. 

As the law now stands, there is no privacy in public
places; that's why sports stadiums are called "Snooper
Bowls." A whisper to your spouse on your front porch is the
public's business, say the courts; and on that intrusive
analogy, long-range microphones may soon be allowed to pick
up voice vibrations on windowpanes. 

When your government, employer, landlord, merchant, banker
and local sports team gang up to picture, digitize and
permanently record your every activity, you are placed
under unprecedented control. This is not some alarmist
Orwellian scenario; it is here, now, financed by $20
billion last year and $15 billion more this year of federal
money appropriated out of sheer fear. 

By creating the means to monitor 300 million visits to the
U.S. yearly, this administration and a supine opposition
are building a system capable of identifying, tracking and
spying on 300 million Americans. So far, the reaction has
been a most un-American docility. 

It's Presidents' Day. To save the capital and thus the
nation, the leader who manipulated his rebellious officers
with an emotional pretense of incipient blindness was
George Washington, and the one who risked creating a Caesar
out of a necessary general was Abraham Lincoln. Neither
would sacrifice our freedom to protect his monument.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/18/opinion/18SAFI.html?ex=1015070337&ei=1&en=44eb1225b5611dfe



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