ShareThisIs Big Brother dead?
According to many in the surveillance industry, author George Orwell's iconic personification of government and industry peeking, prying and poking directly into your public and private life is ready for a funeral.
"I think everyone at first had this philosophy of 'Big Brother' watching you, and they didn't realize all of the aspects of them (surveillance cameras)," said Mike Walker of Professional Security Consultants and Design. "The cameras are there to protect them too just as much as they are to protect the other guy."
The cameras are certainly there. How many are up and running is anybody's guess.
"I am not sure how you can get to that," said Ann Linstrom, a public relations director for ADT, the big name nationally in security systems. "ADT is finding customers in municipal, state and national government, in banks, retailers and at conventions. They are in use in intersections, subways, train stations and parking lots."
In fact, it is hard to find places not being watched by a camera's lens.
"I feel that it is a safe assumption that everywhere you go in public you are being viewed by some camera," said John Knox, owner of Knox Integrated Systems. "Is that good or bad? It depends on what is happening when you are being recorded."
Walker says he seldom hears the "Big Brother" reference anymore.
"It (surveillance) has come into the mainstream so much," he says. "You turn on any TV show now and you see cameras and the way they are utilized."
Suzanne Kurth, an associated professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Tennessee who specializes in "changes in American society due to changes in technology," says her students accept such surveillance as a fact of life.
"What I am continually intrigued by is how unconcerned my students (and others) are at being continually surveilled by cameras and tracked via their cell phones," Kurth writes in an e-mail response. "For them, the convenience of being able to interact with anyone at any time from any location far outweighs the negatives of continually revealing where they are and who they are communicating with.
"Students ... remain unruffled by the idea that their movements are continually being monitored by video surveillance, GPS devices, credit card receipts. People do not see the negatives of continually revealing their location and thoughts through tweeting. Who needs to watch them when they are their own full-time reporters?"
Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, concedes that surveillance cameras are here to stay. He doesn't condemn their use, but said he would like to see more accountability.
"They are completely unregulated," he said. "I have never seen anyone attempt to determine the national numbers. There is no standard to determine where there is a camera or when they should be used."
Calabrese said the ACLU has pushed to get the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to get funding applicants to state what they will use the cameras for before giving approval for the funding.
Knox explained that many in the surveillance business take pains not to violate privacy and to respect the law.
"The key thing is you can't put a camera where people expect privacy," he says, adding that the idea of cameras in clothing store dressing rooms is basically an urban legend. "In a bathroom or a dressing room ... I get asked a lot to do that, but you can't do it. That is why a lot of shoplifting occurs in fitting rooms because they know they are not on tape."
Knox said as a rule he does not put surveillance cameras in residences.
"I stay away from the husband-trying-to-catch-his-wife-cheating thing," he says. "We are just looking for criminal activity in businesses most of the time."
He says, however, that he does do a lot of business in summer homes, especially Tellico Village. The most cameras he has installed in a residence is 16.
"As a distributor-owner," says Knox, "I feel good when a criminal is apprehended because of something caught on the camera, but I feel much better when their (the cameras') presence prevented something bad from happening. You can't measure that because you don't know what you prevented, but to me that is much more gratifying. If a lady is going to a parking lot at night and isn't attacked or raped because they (the attackers) knew that there was a camera there, that for me is doing my job.
"I realize people get concerned about the 'Big Brother' thing, but you've got to get beyond that. This is for your own safety."
(Steve Ahillen is a reporter for The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee.)
