Toward the End of Anonymity- Privacy’s Most Treasured Attribute

Cameras are everywhere today. All the TV crime and terror shows continually make use of cameras, private and municipal, to solve their cases and catch the bad guys.  But what about the 300 million or so good guys?  Are we expected to reside passively in the soup of the system, like it or not, waiting to be plucked out when we commit a transgression?  The answer appears to be yes, and we seem powerless to do anything about it.

The DHS has announced a new policy to photograph all vehicle license plates and track them via the thousands (or possibly millions) of cameras, ostensibly to monitor drug traffickers along our border.  Orwell must be rolling in his grave. The day is soon arriving when our personal whereabouts and our identity is known by government officials 24/7. 

Staple this new capability to the existing self-declaration of who and where we are via the cell phone we all carry around in our pocket and this pretty much seals our fate. At least until now we could think about tossing the cell phone on the side of the road to preserve our whereabouts, but now we have to toss the car to, and thumb a ride if we wish to remain anonymous.

Here’s Janet Napolitano’s announcement:

Janet Napolitano, "We’re partnering with the Office of National Drug Control Policy to implement Project Roadrunner, an automated license-plate recognition system. Project Roadrunner was conceived to target both north- and southbound drug trafficking and associated illegal activity along the Southwest border."