Since 2012 the conversations of people travelling on buses in Maryland have been recorded.
It’s one thing to have active video recording, which can help identify the drunk and the trouble- makers. But to record passenger ‘s conversations! This is really going too far. What this mass surveillance hopes to achieve is puzzling. Maryland has visited this issue four times, and the objection to stopping the recordings (not one person has proved to be undermining the Constitution or to be in league with ISIS) is that to change the cameras so that the the driver activates the recordings when he thinks an incident is developing would incur too great an expense. (Ovetta Wiggins, Washington Post)
George Orwell really got his forecast right didn’t he? Everywhere we look we see intrusion into privacy and encroachment on civil liberties. Serious bombers and planners of massacres don’t generally plan their attacks on local buses stopping and starting in rural Maryland.
I completely agree. There’s no evidence any of these privacy-encroaching measures actually prevent terrorism. They just erode our freedom and cost money. They also smack of desperation. The truth is, politicians and the intelligence services are clueless about stopping terrorism, particularly lone-wolves with no history of violent behaviour. So they invade our privacy in order to look tough and be seen as if they are taking decisive and meaningful action. But if we fundamentally alter our lives to prevent terrorism, then in a way, the terrorists have already won.