Skip to main content

Surveillance Society - by Charles Peña

Surveillance Society - by Charles Peña: "Beyond the question of whether security cameras would make us safer by preventing terrorist attacks (the evidence to date is that they won't) is the issue of government surveillance of its citizenry and the risks posed to civil liberties and privacy. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative 'is a major step toward blanket police monitoring of law-abiding New Yorkers.' Of course, the standard retort is: 'If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about.' The problem is defining what 'wrong' is. One example cited by NYPD spokesperson Paul Browne is a car repeatedly circling the same block. If you've ever been to the Big Apple (or any other large, densely populated city with heavy car traffic), driving around the block looking for parking is pretty normal – hardly behavior that should be considered suspicious.
There is also the question of potential abuse of "

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Broken Spring?       : Information Clearing House

Broken Spring?       : Information Clearing House This is a sequel to my June 2011 article, ‘After the spring’, on the upheavals in the Arab world. It is an article that has been painful to write, because it brings bad tidings and offers a pessimistic analysis of the upheavals, at least in the short term, in a number of Arab countries. The outcomes and potential outcomes of these uprisings have also acquired new, very significant dimensions. These include a complex entanglement with the accelerated preparations for a possible attack on Iran, and a poisonous, sectarian aspect that could have the consequence of ripping Syria and the Middle East apart.