Police State?
It was sometime in 2005 that the police chief asked the city council in Waseca to look into getting cameras installed in Maplewood park. For those of you not familiar with the park it is one of the remnants of Minnesota's "Big Woods" and is located on the eastern edge of clear lake. It has a park with an old boyscout building at the top of a rather large mound of earth. It is also somewhat secluded and had been the target of vandalism in the past, hence the chiefs request and solution to the vandalism problem. The council seemed to be open to the idea and willing to go along with it, except for me. I was sitting on the council at the time and there was something that really bothered me about trading privacy for a sense of security that the cameras were supposed to provide. I explained to the chief and the rest of the council that it was too expensive and that I was quite frankly uncomfortable with the idea of the government putting cameras anywhere in public regardless of the intended purpose. I must have made a decent argument because I convinced enough of the council to vote against the idea with me.
Anyone that has ever read Orwell's novel 1984 knows full well the warning and peril that comes from sacrificing freedom for "security." We see signs of this everywhere in our daily lives and hardly notice the camera's eye anymore. At work or the local market, in a mall parking lot or on top of a pole overlooking the freeway. Companies are working on face recognition software that can recognize people and warn law enforcement of "potential threats." I enjoy safety and security as much as the next person, but not at the cost of my liberty and freedom. Some will argue that if you aren't doing anything illegal, then you have nothing to worry about. To a certain degree this is true, but what if the laws change? At some point in the future, will a government that has grown too big and powerful, decide that free speech is a crime, or the right to assemble against the law, or can I potentially be arrested for trying to buy food rations for my family after the collapse of the dollar? I know that these seem like far fetched scenarios, but they could realistically be right around the corner. And if these things ever come to pass, why give our government the power to easily keep track of our wherabouts.
We the people, still have the opportunity to speak out against this type of surveillance activity. Let your representatives at all levels of government know that you do not approve of surveillance of the average citizen.
Anyone that has ever read Orwell's novel 1984 knows full well the warning and peril that comes from sacrificing freedom for "security." We see signs of this everywhere in our daily lives and hardly notice the camera's eye anymore. At work or the local market, in a mall parking lot or on top of a pole overlooking the freeway. Companies are working on face recognition software that can recognize people and warn law enforcement of "potential threats." I enjoy safety and security as much as the next person, but not at the cost of my liberty and freedom. Some will argue that if you aren't doing anything illegal, then you have nothing to worry about. To a certain degree this is true, but what if the laws change? At some point in the future, will a government that has grown too big and powerful, decide that free speech is a crime, or the right to assemble against the law, or can I potentially be arrested for trying to buy food rations for my family after the collapse of the dollar? I know that these seem like far fetched scenarios, but they could realistically be right around the corner. And if these things ever come to pass, why give our government the power to easily keep track of our wherabouts.
We the people, still have the opportunity to speak out against this type of surveillance activity. Let your representatives at all levels of government know that you do not approve of surveillance of the average citizen.
