PT Cell

All of us at Vertex are interested in new developments in surveillance. We try to look at new technology and new equipment and systems as they come out, and we keep an interested eye on new applications for existing security systems technology.

We’re also active proponents of using technology as a tool to improve safety, whether it’s that of your family and home - the people and things that matter to you - or your business. Private property is one of the keystones of our nation’s heritage, and we think back fondly to the old saying, “A man’s home is his castle.” Protecting it and the people who live there is the most natural impulse of humankind, though from time to time it’s good to remember the origin of the phrase.

Used to be in Merrye Olde England that the King could do no wrong. Used to be that people who lived in “the realm” were subjects, not citizens, meaning they were subject to the rules set by the king, dukes, earls, and other appointed or self-appointed rulers. Those guys (and the occasional queen or duchess) had complete rights over their subjects. They owned the land, they took a portion of its produce, they could take the men as soldiers and the women as - well, whatever men wanted the women for - and they could demand that the people house and feed their royal troops. Nobody had the right to keep anyone who outranked him out of his house.

One of the happy results of the American Revolution that freed us from the whims of monarchy and the vestiges of feudalism was that the founding fathers insisted on the Fourth Amendment - to protect every American citizen from being subject to the power of the state. As a US citizen, you can’t be forced to allow troops - whether it’s the Army, the Marines, or your local police department - to enter your home and search it, UNLESS they’ve gone to court to get a warrant listing probable cause and the reasons for the search.

That’s because, in America, it’s not just the King and the aristocracy who live in castles - every man’s home is his castle here.

The point of all this is that we Americans, from the founding of our nation, have insisted on the right to be left alone. And when we own (or rent, through a lease-hold) private property, we have the same right to protect it as an earl does. Though not many of us have a castle keep or a moat, we do have peepholes, police locks, intercom systems, hired guards (doormen), and security webcams and suchlike.

That right to be left alone, and the related right to protect ourselves and our loved ones and property, derive from our forefathers’ decision to LIMIT the rights of anybody else to intrude on us, physically or otherwise. You don’t have to let anyone into your home (without a warrant), and it’s nobody’s business what you do while you’re inside it (unless it’s illegal, like making bombs, in which case they still need a warrant to come in and catch you). But otherwise, it’s nobody’s business what books you read, what TV shows you watch, what endearments you use to your spouse or significant other. In other words, we as Americans are at complete liberty to put a spy cam on our property facing out, but the government - the state, the king, the whoever it may be - has no liberty to put a spycam outside facing in (again, without probable cause and a warrant).

That’s why we sometimes are bothered by the growing trend towards public surveillance, like the town in Alaska that we reported on a few weeks ago. And that’s why we have mixed feelings about the following news tidbit.

The Associated Press reported on Thursday, June 8, that Texas Gov. Rick Perry “wants to round up a virtual border posse through webcams.” The plan, which would cost about $5 million, is to cover the Texas-Mexico border by live video cameras placed on private land. The state would get permission from landowners. The video would be shown live on the Internet, allowing anyone who has a computer to keep an eye on the border. There would be a toll-free hotline number to call to report border crossings or anything else they see that strikes them as suspicious.

While this might sound like a concept out of “1984,” the fact is that the US Border Patrol already has cameras all along the Mexican border. Those, however, feed only to law enforcement, not the public. The head of the Border Patrol employees’ union, T. J. Bonner, is concerned that by feeding the videos live to the Internet, the number of calls coming in could overwhelm the Patrol’s ability to respond. He also was skeptical that the cameras would remain undiscovered by smugglers and immigrants.

And while the Border Patrol Chief, David Aguilar, expressed willingness to meet with the governor and “align our forces,” he pointed out that the state’s plan was devised independently.

That story suggests to me that collectively the American people want to protect ourselves the same way individuals want to - to keep intruders out by keeping an electronic eye on them. Nothing wrong with that, in principle, but it does make me wonder: if we reach the point at which all our streets, intersections, borders, post offices, toll booths, highways, and every other public place in the United States is watched by a camera, will we have started pointing the camera in at ourselves? Is there, in other words, a place, or moment, where being out in public is still private? If a married man goes to Central Park to meet with his mistress, knowing that his wife is at work on Long Island, is it appropriate that - in theory - she could later scan on-line videos and review his every movement from the time he leaves his office to the time he holds his tryst?

I think about some of the situations in which many of us would hate to be videotaped “in public” when we think it’s private - the guy who steps behind a tree when nature calls, or the middle aged lady picking her nose, to take two fairly innocuous and mundane examples. Would we want the police, or the Border Patrol, or “the gummint,” as they call it in Texas, watching while we unzip?

So, while we’re all in favor of you and your neighbors and your company colleagues utilizing the best state-of-the-art equipment to protect your own privacy and property and family, we have a few reservations about invading everyone else’s. There have certainly been enough abuses already reported to make us cautious about the extent we’re willing to go with public surveillance.