24 January—There’s a movement afoot in Connecticut to permit municipalities to install cameras on or at traffic lights and use them to photograph drivers who run red lights. State law doesn’t currently allow that, although cameras have already been installed here and there. Big federal, state, or local brother is always watching, after all, and I expect it wouldn’t be too hard to camouflage the cameras. But why bother with camouflage? Such cameras are in fact legal in Connecticut, although they’re not supposed to be used to ticket drivers for any reason. Just to intimate them. Among others.

Proponents maintain that the red-light cameras will help reduce both vehicular and vehicular-pedestrian accidents at intersections. Statistics tell a different story, that they have in fact increased the number of rear-end accidents at intersections.

That makes some sense when you consider that a driver approaching a yellow light is more likely to slam on her brakes when she faces a hefty fine if she goes through a light just as it’s turning red. And since virtually all drivers drivers travel too fast and tailgate, there you have it.

T-bone and pedestrian collisions, on the other hand are more likely to decrease. Revenue to cities and states is bound to increase, as well as income for the businesses that provide and service the cameras. And lots of drivers and car owners are sure to do various things to thwart the cameras. It’s evidently pretty easy.

Red-light cameras naturally take us to closed-circuit TV cameras. Before you groan, There goes our privacy, however, consider that CCTV cameras are virtually everywhere even now, recording virtually everything we do.

CCTV hasn’t yet metastasized through the United States quite to the alarming extent it has through virtually every other country, but we’re getting there. It’s said to effectively improve community (public) safety, deter crime, and help police apprehend criminals. At the cost of privacy, to be sure. But what’s more important?

There is no enumerated constitutional right to privacy—especially in public venues—after all.

The more CCTV, the more surveillance, the less privacy. I’ll resist the temptation to bring in “1984.” Rather, I’ll just lament that CCTV is the thin end of the wedge, the means to the tyrannical end of whatever limited freedom we’re afforded by the Constitution. If, like me, you don’t trust the various levels of government now, just wait till they all know what each of us is doing whenever we’re doing it.

Did you know that even now Russia and Red China are among the totalitarian states using facial recognition enabled through many thousands of CCTV cameras to monitor anyone and everyone the big brothers dislike, fear, or are just interested in?

And that’s not all. The Dolans, former owners of Cablevision, are currently using biometric scanning—facial recognition—to keep people who are suing them out of Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, which they currently control.

So don’t think it can’t happen here . . .