In an op-ed in  Popular Mechanics (it makes perfect sense if you think about it), Glenn Reynolds of  Instapundit fame notes that it’s time to fight fire with fire.  Between law enforcement and business, almost every move we make, at least in public, ends up on someone’s videotape.  Why shouldn’t it be ours?

The first step in fixing a problem is to admit we have one.  Society has a privacy issue.  It doesn’t matter if you fall on the side of it being a blessing or a curse, because the ubiquitous surveillance cameras are already in place and rolling.  They have been for some time.  The Orwellian vision of 1984, where no word against the government could be uttered without detection, may have gotten the year wrong, but he was pretty darned close when it came to the concept.  As Glenn put it,

[T]he trend toward constant surveillance is troubling. And even if the public became concerned enough to pass laws limiting the practice, it’s not clear how well those laws would work. Government officials and private companies too often ignore privacy laws. (In a notorious recent case, Hewlett-Packard executives were caught spying on the phone records of reporters covering the company.) Besides, the technology of surveillance is becoming so advanced—biologists are now attaching tiny cameras to crows’ tail feathers to observe the birds’ tool use in the wild—that in reality there’s not much we can do to ensure privacy anyway.

So the problem isn’t that we are under constant surveillance anymore.  The horse left the barn long ago on that one.  The problem is that surveillance is under the other guy’s control.  Given the power and authority of a video, that puts an awful lot into the hands of institutions whose purpose is to assert its authority over people.  As we’ve posted here many times, whether in the  Utah taser video or the unlawful police searches or beatings caught on tape, sometimes the “good guys” do bad things and nobody is going to believe it happened without pictures.

How do we know it matters?  Primarily because of how the authorities don’t want us to do it.  Note the prosecutions of individuals who violated the Massachusetts wiretapping laws because they videotaped the police acting unlawfully.  Note the antagonism of police when mainstream media TV cameras capture them doing their “job”.  Cops like to watch.  They do not like to be watched. 

In the old days, ordinary people didn’t have much privacy, but neither did big shots. By contrast, today’s government officials and big corporations often want to watch us, but they don’t want to be watched in return. Shopping malls are full of security cameras, but many have signs at the entrance telling customers that no photography or video recording is allowed. Police cars have dashboard cameras, cities and counties are posting red-light and speed-limit cameras, and it seems that the dream of many government officials is to put every public space under 24-hour video watch. But try shooting photos or video of police or ­other public officials as they go about their business and you might find yourself in wrist restraints.

So it would be if we left it up to the cops.  But a string of cases that resulted in both the citizen prevailing and the cops and prosecutors getting their heads ripped off for trying to stifle and conceal misconduct have given us hope.  It’s not a done deal by any stretch, as shown by the fact that people are forced to defend themselves against this shocking impropriety, thus being put at risk as well as expense and trauma.  But the message is becoming clearer to police.  We are watching you too.

Under the law, citizens have no right not to be photographed in public places. So why should people who make their living on the taxpayers’ dime enjoy greater freedom from public scrutiny than the taxpayers themselves? Civil liberties groups have begun supporting the trend toward a video-enabled populace. The Eastern Missouri chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sends out volunteers with cameras, though they have faced police hostility at times.

So this has become another conflict between the authority and the citizens who pay their wages and for whom they are given a gun and shield to serve.  So it doesn’t always work out the way we expect.  Surprise!

Glenn surmises that the cameras are more likely to exonerate police than capture them in wrongdoing.  I suppose this point is made to show that (1) police really are the good guys most of the time, and (2) police have no reason to fear being videotaped by citizens.  This is the “one bad apple” point of view, espoused by the silent majority since the Nixon days, and it misses the point.

We, meaning the common citizen, are entitled to expect law enforcement to obey the law, honor the Constitution and protect us, all the time.  It is not good enough that they do so most of the time.  It is not excusable that they only become the very danger that they are supposed to protect us from some of the time.  And as soon as our expectations of law enforcement are lowered to the point that we feel that 5%, or 10% or 25% of law-breaking by cops is acceptable, we have lost our moral imperative to protect and defend.

So get a little camera and keep it handy.  Think of it as our small way of helping to cleanse society of crime, no matter who commits it.