Smile For the Camera
by TChris
Your movements are recorded as you walk the streets of major cities. You know that private security cameras watch you shop for sweaters, but city streets have always been anonymous, a place to be lost in the crowd. Until now. The hope of finding private moments in a public setting, you now realize, is so last century.
In New York, "wireless video cameras peer down from lamp posts about 30 feet above the sidewalk." Five hundred of them. New Yorkers paid $9 million dollars so their government could record their public meanderings. And that's only a start.
The city already has about 1,000 cameras in the subways, with 2,100 scheduled to be in place by 2008. An additional 3,100 cameras monitor city housing projects.
New York's approach isn't unique. Chicago spent roughly $5 million on a 2,000-camera system. Homeland Security officials in Washington plan to spend $9.8 million for surveillance cameras and sensors on a rail line near the Capitol. And Philadelphia has increasingly relied on video surveillance.
This pervasive inspection of public movement and social interaction brings 1984 to mind. The omnipresent watchful eye of government helps the investigation of crime, but have cities weighed that benefit against the social cost? Is one dystopia sufficient, or will city governments next try to bring Fahrenheit 451 to life?
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