Are You Ready For Your Close-up?

What if some government agents knocked on your door, gave you a device about the size of an MP3 player attached to a lanyard, and told you you'd have to put it on when you leave your home, wear it everywhere you go, and not take it off until you return?  What if the purpose of the device was to track your every movement, record every location you visited?  What level of outrage would you experience?  Enough to tell the agent what he could do with his device?

Well, guess what.  If you have a cell phone, you've pretty much done the government's work for it.  See, every time you make a call while you're out and about, it's a simple matter for the feds to pinpoint your location.  Your cell phone is, in effect, a GPS.

Not to worry.  Sam isn't going to monitor millions of cell phones to trace the movements of millions of citizens.  Except, of course, those of folks who are up to no good.  Fall under suspicion, and you won't even be able to sneak into a Mickey D's for a double-cheese fatburger without being a blip on some feebie's radar.

Think you can beat the system by simply leaving your cell phone at home?  Think again, paranoia-breath.  Bet those two wastes of human souls that set off the bombs at the Boston Marathon thought they were more invisible than Sebastian Caine.  Yet there they were, spotted in a photo shot by someone's cell phone, walking down the street, one with a Cheshire cat grin on his face, right after the blast.

Cameras, video and still, are everywhere.  Anyone with a cell phone that didn't come out of a Cracker Jack box has video capability.  Practically every business has them, both inside its facility and outside covering the parking lot.  Banks have them aimed at ATMs  Cops have them on the dashes of their patrol cars.  They are literally so pervasive, you cannot pick your nose without expectation that someone, somewhere, is guffawing over your slovenliness.

Besides criminals, of course, you know who should be worried about the proliferation of cameras and their attendant photo ops?  Walmartians, that's who.  They should be, but clearly they aren't, otherwise they wouldn't leave their doublewides dressed and looking like they do.  Instead, their decided lack of fashion sense and decorum is recorded and plastered all over the Internet.  They're actually proud of their three inches of exposed butt crack, six inches of cleavage between two boobs the size of melons that are spilling out of their halters, guts that look like the men to whom they belong are in their third trimesters, and clothing that can best be described as trailer park couture.

You've seen those pics.  You wish you hadn't, but you can't tear your eyes off them.  It's worth whatever privacy I'm giving up on my daily rounds just to be able to indulge that guilty pleasure.

The ACLU, as you might suspect, is not happy over the widespread use of surveillance equipment, which is another selling point for me.

The ACLU argues that video surveillance has not been proven effective, that suicide bombers, for example, are not deterred by the prospect of being filmed while blowing themselves up.  Of course not.  But the Boston Marathon morons were not suicidal.  Had it not been for having their picture taken, they'd still be on the loose, perhaps plotting the next display of their disgruntledness at having to live in America.

The ACLU also believes that video surveillance is subject to criminal, institutional and personal abuses, that the temptation to employ video surveillance in pursuit of individual agendas is simply too great a trade-off for whatever deterrence and criminal identification benefits it does manage to provide.  Yeah, yeah.  Every human activity is subject to abuse.  What, are we going to outlaw everything?

I never understood folks who live as remotely from others as possible because they don't want anyone snooping in their business.  It's exactly in small, sparsely populated areas where everyone knows everyone else's business.  You want privacy?  Live in a city, the bigger the better.  No one there cares about your business.  Or you, for that matter.

Me?  Anyone comes up to me and says, "Smile!  You're on candid camera," I give him a big grin, shake his hand and say, "Thank you!  And swing by Walmart while you're on your way, okay, Alan?"