A disturbing poll
An ABC News poll (PDF) has shown that the majority of Americans seem to prefer a police state.
The question in the poll was worded this way:
Some people support the use of surveillance cameras in public places as a way to help solve crimes. Others say these cameras go too far as a government intrusion on personal privacy. What’s your opinion – do you support or oppose the increased use of surveillance cameras in public places?
Although I think the results may have been different if the question had consisted merely of the third sentence and omitted the first two, I find it shocking that 71 percent said they favored surveillance cameras, and only 25 percent were opposed.
Look at that first sentence; it casts the issue as a "way to help solve crimes," and not as a "way to spy on innocent people." The second sentence says it's a "government intrusion on personal privacy," and not a "government intrusion on your privacy." Different wording would have surely affected the results, but the margin of 71 to 25 is so large, the wording of the question probably wouldn't have made that much difference.
Seventy-one percent of the American people apparently don't think the Fourth Amendment means anything, or that it was added for no good reason. Seventy-one percent of the American public has lost sight of the fact that unfettered police power not only can be abused, it will be abused. It's a metaphysical certainty that innocent people, minding their own business, would be tracked and monitored.
Warrantless surveillance isn't about law enforcement, and it isn't about security; it's about control. No surveillance society in history has ever been free (see the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the Communist regimes of Romania and East Germany for starters); a population under constant surveillance becomes paranoid, unsure of who's watching, and ultimately unsure of who's a spy or snitch. That isn't freedom, by any stretched definition of the word; it's a chapter straight out of Orwell.
Proponents of unfettered, unwarranted surveillance tend to make two arguments: the system will catch bad guys, and I have nothing to hide.
Sure, it'll catch bad guys, but at what price? Is it worth the price of surrendering your life to the police just to catch a purse snatcher? Is that really a free society?
Having nothing to hide is irrelevant to the issue of surveillance. Whether the surveillance takes the form of unwarranted monitoring of phone calls and emails or the unwarranted eyeballing of people going about their daily lives, we are not subjects of our government. We don't answer to them -- they answer to us. Being free from unwarranted search is fundamental to the American notion of liberty. Surrendering our privacy to police cameras would be no different from allowing police to stop people randomly on the street and demand to see their papers.
We decided collectively a long time ago that the police may not search us without a good reason to do so. Blanket surveillance, whether instigated by the White House or by local authorities, is anathema to our history and our values.
Liberty cannot exist without a fundamental right to privacy, even when walking down the street.