Showing posts with label big brother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label big brother. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Smile, you're (probably) on camera

The fact that a Minnesota bridge collapsed is shocking. What isn't surprising to me is that there is video documenting the tragedy. It seems that whenever a national tragedy occurs, whether it be school shootings, terrorism, natural disasters, etc., there's always a video, sometimes several. Often it's from security cameras, traffic cameras or from random people who just happened to have immediate access to a camera.

I don't have a grand point to make about this, or really a judgment one way or the other. In general, I can't say it's so bad that all these cameras exist. They don't seem to actively intrude on everyone's day-to-day life, and usually when the videos do surface, they can help investigators figure out what went wrong in certain situations, such as the Minnesota bridge. But it does make me a bit uneasy. If cameras are always around when disasters occur, then they're around for the everyday, mundane moments as well, and that just feels intrusive. No matter how helpful he can occasionally be, no one wants Big Brother around all the time.