2008-08-12                Photo Enforcement is a threat to Freedom

At one of the Village Board meetings I wrongly attributed this quotation to Mark Twain and I misquoted it as well.  My humble apologies.  It was actually George Washington!

Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master.

Folks, a surveillance network is not the tool of a servant.

Photo Enforcement is a dangerous step toward a totalitarian America.  Some folks disagree, saying that "it's just a couple red light cameras".  Such folks fail to reckon the nationwide proliferation of lazy surveillance-based enforcement into their definition of "just a couple".  There is a clear trend toward more and more surveillance speeding up, not slowing down.

The assertion that surveillance networks enhance safety is far from empty, but a little more safety is cold comfort against eroding freedom.
I would like to point out to readers that I never once have used the word "privacy" in the debate regarding red light cameras.  Although I do believe that the mere capability, whether leveraged or not, to gather a database of everyone's movements is indeed an invasion of privacy, I do not assert that invasion of privacy is the main problem with red light (or speed) cameras. It's just one of many problems.

The biggest problem is this:  Totalitarian regimes throughout history have used as their main weapon secret storehouses of information about their citizens.  They have stuff on you but you never know how much or what.  They can pick you up any time for whatever reason they can trump out of their dossiers, and in today's America, with modern database and facial recognition software, networks of traffic cameras can collect a dossier only dreamed of by prior paper-based tyrants.

Think it can't happen here?  So did thousands of Germans in 1936.

Following the same logic used for red light cameras, we will eventually see ubiquitous red light, speed and stop sign cameras.  Unless a sufficient majority of Americans step forth to squash this trend, it is poised to grow apace into the future.

Orwell and all of history's tyrants have given us the warning. 

Shame on us if we ignore it.