Sunday, February 26, 2006

If You're Not Doing Anything Wrong, Why Should You Worry?

Caught this at Schneier. This tops out the extreme in statements that make me angry.
HOUSTON -- Houston's police chief on Wednesday proposed placing surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets, shopping malls and even private homes to fight crime during a shortage of police officers.

"I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?" Chief Harold Hurtt told reporters Wednesday at a regular briefing.

Why should I worry? Well, because I don't want you having access to my life in any aspect. Not to mention that these cameras don't actually prevent crime, but they certainly help the police with cleaning up the mess later. Personally, I'd prefer being protected before hand. But then, the police aren't responsible for protecting you, so why should they.
Building permits should require malls and large apartment complexes to install surveillance cameras, Hurtt said. And if a homeowner requires repeated police response, it is reasonable to require camera surveillance of the property, he said.
Ah, I see, so a person has problems with criminals, so they are the ones that must go under constant surveillance. Doesn't that strike you as being a bit ass-backwards?

I've a suggestion. If we as citizens shouldn't have any objection, let's start the pilot program by installing cameras in the houses of ALL police officers and ALL politicians. Hey, why should they have any reason to worry about the cameras, right?

Other worries about this type of idea come down to why should we the citizens trust the government to protect the information gathered by these cameras? The film footage could easily be abused by those controlling it. Never see anyone's private film footage getting onto the internet have we? This is also a case of the police saying "trust me." Police never do anything wrong do they? I suppose Internal Affairs departments are only there to comfort the public.

Really bad idea.

1 comment:

Granted said...

That is one seriously messed up idea. However, if we have say, a three year trial with the cameras in the Police & Politician homes as you suggest, we'd have more information to render an informed evaluation at the end of it.