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Volume 71, Issue 93,
Monday, February 20, 2006
Opinion Surveillance cameras unacceptable Craig Stewart
There are some offenses so grievous, some wrongs so heinous that they will not, nay cannot, be tolerated by a people. The City of Houston has reached that point. Police Chief Harold Hurtt called for "a new type of patrol: surveillance cameras on downtown streets, apartment complexes and shopping malls -- and in extreme situations, private homes," the Houston Chronicle reported Wednesday. This is unacceptable. Plain and simple, we cannot allow this to occur. No circumstance will ever justify putting government surveillance cameras in private homes, much less in apartment complexes, shopping malls and on downtown streets. When the city of Houston began instituting its ill-advised red light camera program to catch red light runners, some people argued that it was merely a stepping stone to an Orwellian, 1984, Big Brother style of government of constant surveillance, suspicion and monitoring. I, like many others, harbored this nagging fear, but there were other more tangible problems with the program: According to Texas state law at the time, the city did not even have the right to put up the cameras. Also, nearly every study on red light traffic cameras showed that total numbers of accidents increase when red light cameras are installed and in several studies injury accidents increased rather than decreased (from people slamming on their brakes so they do not run the camera-enforced red light). An impractical, unwise choice was made by the city when it, even momentarily, ignored concerns about freedom and privacy. But we cannot ever ignore these concerns; they are inextricably linked to the issue of surveillance. Most of us have taken U.S. History 1377 and 1378. Have we forgotten the sacrifices our forefathers made in the name of freedom? Have we forgotten how our families immigrated here for the sake of liberty and prosperity? Will we give it all away as if it were a coin to be traded for a bit of alleged safety? Will we let our government run roughshod over us and monitor our every move, our every breath? What is America if not the land of the free? Yes, my rhetoric is over the top. Yes, I am being alarmist. Yes, I realize that I am mistrustful. But when our government seeks to control and watch our every move, the time has come for all of these emotions. We lived in fear for 50 years that the Russians would come and take away our most prized possessions: our freedom and democracy, and now we will let a two-bit police chief take them from us. This is not a Republican issue except insofar as we want to defend this Republic and our Constitution from all enemies, inside and out. This is not a Democratic issue except insofar as Democracy is that ideal for which my fathers' fathers bled for over 200 years ago. And yet we will meekly succumb to a petty tyrant within our own shores? We cannot and we will not. This tyranny cannot stand, and liberty is not a value that I will barter away. In the inimitable words of Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," and, "Give me liberty or give me death." Would it be safer with the cameras? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it is irrelevant. Would we be free? No. Stewart, a guest columnist for The Daily Cougar,
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