Police cameras are coming to a neighborhood near you
Officials in Columbia, S.C. are planning to install surveillance cameras county-wide in "high crime areas."
The goal is to place surveillance cameras in dangerous areas so criminals don't have anywhere to hide.At a news conference Tuesday, officials said similar programs have worked in other areas and it can work in Richland County, too.
"The best neighbor is a nosey neighbor. This system becomes an additional nosey neighbor," Sam Davis with the Columbia City Council said.
Now, where do you suppose the "high crime areas" are? This would mean downtown? Predominantly low income or black neighborhoods?
I have a hard time understanding why every citizen would not be up in arms over the mention of the police placing surveillance cameras in public areas. The day will soon come when every moment of every day we are being watched by the government. A simple google search reveals the following:
Hillsborough County, Florida, Sheriff's Office installs cameras in high crime areas.
Police in Lafayette, Louisiana, force business owners to install cameras.
Police in San Francisco install cameras in high crime areas.
Baltimore police install cameras in high crime areas.
Utica, N.Y. jumps on the band wagon, along with
Washington, D.C., New York city, Dallas, San Diego, Austin, Boston, Louisville KY, and the list goes on.
Mass-surveillance advocates ask, if you are walking down the street in a public place, do you really have an expectation of privacy? And the answer, of course, is no. Not legally and not practically, but they are asking the wrong question. Do we want to live in a world where the only time we are not being watched by our government is when we are in our own home, and possibly not even then?
Another aspect of this is where the cameras are being placed now - in "high crime areas." Meaning, cameras are not being placed in the neighborhood of the persons in power. They are being placed in primarily ethnic neighborhoods, where people have less of a voice or power to prevent it, but it will not stop here and it will spread.
We need only look to London, England, which now has about 4.2 million cameras on its streets, which have cost billions of pounds and yet have not had any significant impact on crime, as an example of where this will take us.
