Just in time for the 25th anniversary of the year that George Orwell chose to title his foreboding novel about “Big Brother,” the leaders of the idyllic town of Tiburon, California are contemplating what many are considering to be a 1984-ish type of action. The police department has proposed and the town council is considering approval of a camera system that will take a photograph of every license plate of every vehicle that enters this postcard-appearing town that juts into San Francisco Bay.
Over the 20 years that I have been writing Press On, I have addressed the topic of the invasion of citizen privacy on at least a couple of occasions. Several years ago, when the Will Smith movie “Enemy of the State” made the rounds of the national theaters, I wrote something about how invasive the monitoring of every citizen in this country has become and how much it appeared that George Orwell”s once deemed “futuristic” novel had become ever closer to reality.
Here is how Tiburon Police Chief Michael Cronin views the installation of the cameras. He said, “It”s more efficient than having an officer sit on the boulevard, watch passing cars and guess who might be a burglar.” My family actually had that type of situation impact us right here in Lakeport a couple of months ago. My twenty-something year-old daughter regularly takes her two little dogs to the nice, new dog park at Westside Community Park. While she was sitting on a chair at the park one day a Lakeport Police cruiser drove by once, then a second time and on the third time, she said the officer stopped behind her car for a couple of minutes. She assumed that he was calling in her tag number to find out who owned the car.
Well, she was absolutely correct. I was sitting in the Record-Bee newsroom when I heard my name and my wife”s name come over the police scanner. My daughter”s car is still registered in our names. What a shock it was to hear my information coming in loud and clear over the scanner. Some of my staff even made comments about it.
When I learned from my daughter what had taken place, I called Kevin Burke at the police department and asked why an officer would need to check on a young woman who was reading a book at the dog park while her pets played in the grass? On Kevin”s behalf, he is extremely professional and certainly has the best intentions for Lakeport at heart. But, I had to let him know that I believe that checking up on people who are obviously not in danger or causing any problems just might tend to be viewed negatively, especially in a town with a tourist-driven economy.
I realize that police departments have a difficult time trying to reduce crime in the cities they are sworn to protect, but somewhere a line has to be drawn to make it clear that more surveillance is just too intrusive. We crossed the line I would have drawn long ago. In the name of security, we are all too frequently being monitored.
How long will it be before Newspeak is implemented? For those who have read “1984,” it is a language, devoid of words related to rebellion, which was forced on the citizens in Orwell”s book, in which thought-crime was considered the worst crime of all. Many people shrug and say, “If you haven”t done anything wrong, don”t be concerned about being monitored.” But, in a country where only one out of four people say that they trust the government, should we continue to allow new invasions of our privacy?
Gary Dickson is the editor and publisher of the Record-Bee. He can be reached at gdickson@record-bee.com or 263-5636, ext. 24.
