The
price of security
The
land of the free, the country where dreams come true, the place where human
rights are protected and respected. Those were the slogans that brought
millions of people to America. You
certainly had opportunities and you still have. Freedom and the respect of the
human rights however weren’t always the strength of the American system. There
is one specific problem lately: our right for privacy is being abused in many
ways. In the last and the present century wars abroad and violence inside the
country made certain officials think about how they could control and raise the
level of safeness. They realized to ensure safety; they have to find the way to
survey public places with surveillance cameras and certain security checkpoints.
Though the benefits of using these cameras and other devices are obvious, I
think invading privacy to ensure safety is unethical and unacceptable. Because…
Most of us want to be alone sometimes. Normally those are
the days when you stay at home and try to avoid any conversation or activity
with others. But there are other people who are not so lucky to have that
place, or it is impossible to have that little privacy at their own house. So they
like to go out to parks, to bars or just wonder around the streets being with
their thoughts. Would they feel comfortable if meanwhile driving around some
policeman was stopping them for a random reason? Or let’s say sitting in a
park, some camera just turns towards them and recording what are they doing? I
read it in a Toronto Star article that: in London, a man tried to attempt a
suicide. A public camera took footage of the attempt, which later was given to
TV stations. However the image had been blurred, the man was still identifiable
and now he’s suing. He had enough problems already, what lead him to that
decision. He luckily didn’t manage to kill himself, but his problems just
multiplied. Nobody wants to become famous this way!
I have a feeling that, I’m being watched at all the time,
whether I’m in an office or on the street. In many states of North America thousands
of photo ticketing devices were being installed at intersections regulated by
traffic lights. A 2007 Washington Post article says: “Although - in the
identification of license plates - errors have been made, there is a
presumption that any photographed vehicle’s registered owner is guilty of
running a red light.” So is the law changing? We have to prove our innocence
before we have been proven guilty? AAA
has revealed that thousands of motorists have been wrongly accused of speeding
because of glitches in the controversial speed camera system. Occasionally,
these accusations go even further. I remember reading it in a newspaper a
couple of years ago that once in Arizona the police have arrested a man, for
speeding based solely on the evidence of its photo radar machines that registered
his vehicle traveling at an impossibly high speed of 147 MPH. That poor man had
to prove it in court that, his car - according to the manufacturer - has a
drag-limited top speed of 137 MPH. This
man has not only been invaded in his privacy, but a false device took his
freedom away. Here I should mention the movie I have recently seen: The
Minority Report. It is a science fiction movie, plays in the near future, where
the whole city built on the new system, called Pre-Crime. With the help of certain
individuals, called the pre-cogs, who are able to see who will commit a murder
in a future, crime rate sank to a very law level. But the people have to pay a
big price for that. They have no privacy at all. They are being watched
constantly. Infrared cameras scanning their eyes, following them everywhere
they go. They’re being recognized in stores, in their jobs, even in their home
sometimes. They are under surveillance, under control.
I travel enough to see how
humiliating can be to go through an airport security checkpoint. Meanwhile I
understand the government’s reasoning why they had to set up those stations to
ensure some kind of security measures, I disagree with how they disgrace people
during the check-in. That is an invasion of privacy. Just think about how they
are searching through your bag with an X-ray machine or with their hands. Do
you really want them or anybody else to see what are you carrying with you?
Then you have to take off half of your clothes, your shoes in front of
everybody. What if you’re choice of clothing is making you a subject of
ridicule? Or you are just old or sick and it is difficult to put back your
clothes on? Then you have to stand in the middle of this unit, meanwhile a
machine scans you’re entire body to find out if you carry anything illegal. How
do we know how safe these machines really are? I really feel sorry for my Mom,
what she goes through all the time she travels. She has got a knee replacement
a couple of years ago. So any time she goes to the airport she shows them her
papers why the X-ray machine will give a sound. They still make her go through it
several times. Furthermore, they usually take her to a private office, where an
officer scans her from head to toe. Does she have to go through all these
procedures at the age of 72? One thing is sure; we don’t have a choice now. You
obey the rules, because you have to go, you have to reach your destination. I
assume 95 % - if not more - of us are just regular travellers, who have not even
got a bad thought trying to endanger our fellow people, but because of that
possible 5 %, we have to suffer as well.
Advocates of this kind of
surveillance say that, there are plenty of benefits of using these devices. Let’s
say the red-light cameras are needed to reduce accidents. Cameras set up in
public parks and streets or in subway stations can help to stop a crime or at
least help to catch the criminals by recording the assaults or robberies. It is
true. By the end of the 90’s in New York City, police say a surveillance
program has already resulted in a 44 percent reduction in offences such as drug
dealing, vandalism and sexual assault. There are other benefits as well. They
have been able to help when someone goes down ill in a public place or it also
helps to find runaway kids. Officials said that, the operators of these cameras
and devices usually have to follow a strict code of practice that limits how
they can move and position the cameras so as not to violate people’s privacy on
their own property. Footage is never given out, supposedly. But do these
cameras actually stop the crimes or just move them to another location? Can’t
criminals destroy those cameras, before they record anything? Are those images
clear enough for certain recognition? There are a lot of possibilities for computer
or human errors. Cameras can be miscalibrated, the pictures has been taken by
them could be blurry. They can be very effective in catching crimes but they
can be abusive in lots of ways. They can be used for evil reasons as well. George
Orwell wrote his famous fiction, 1984
about the possibility how the bad way of using surveillance can turn the world
to a hellish place. In 1984, London is a scary place where the government, Big
Brother is always watching and the Thought Police can read your mind. “The
telescreen was received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston
made, above the level of very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover,
so long as he remained within the field of vision, which the metal plaque
commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of
knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. It was conceivable
that they watched everybody at all the time.” (Orwell, p.90.) Then it gets
worst. “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in
any public place or within a range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could
give you away: a nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of
muttering to yourself – anything that carried with the suggestion of
abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case to wear an improper
expression on your face was itself a punishable offense.” (Orwell, p.145.)
Orwell’s world was just a fiction,
but those monitors and listening devices already exist. You don’t even have to
go to the street. Just have to turn on your cellphone or use a social network
website! Meanwhile no one can except full privacy in a public space, people
still have a right not to be subjected to surveillance at all the time. People
should have some influence over this. We have the right to live our lives in
anonymity. There is a major difference in between somebody is watching out for
us, or somebody is watching us!
Works sited:
Stollenwerk, Mike “Don’t Give the Green Light to
Intrusive Red-Light Cameras.” Editorial
Copy.
The Washington Post. Regional Edition.
18 March 2007. Print.
Hurst, Linda “Not 1984: Just someone to watch over us
Surveillance is everywhere, but
opponents
aren’t” Sunday Second Edition. The
Toronto Star. 22 March 1998. Print.
Orwell, George 1984
New York: Harcourt, Inc. 1949. (p.90, 145.) Print.
Minority Report. Dir.
Steven Spielberg. Perf. Tom Cruise. Amblin, 2002. Film.
