The Cranky Media Guy

According to the New York Times, the NYPD will have more than 100 surveillance cameras monitoring cars in Lower Manhattan by the end of this year.  I’m sad at seeing fear overtake reason in what is supposed to be a free country.

You may be aware that Great Britain is the country with the most security cameras on Earth.  London has a so-called Ring of Steel, a web of cameras and roadblocks “designed to detect, track and deter terrorists.” 

New York emulating London’s web of cameras is a good thing, you say?  It’ll help prevent terror attacks, you say.  Oh, really?

From the NYT:

“British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track
suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb
plots last month.”

In other words, the thousands of cameras in London did exactly Jack Shit to prevent psychos from killing innocent people.  Do you honestly imagine that anyone extreme enough to engage in a suicide bombing is going to think, “I’m willing to die for [insert irrational cause here] but not if I’m on camera“?

Let me ask you a question.  If you think that government-operated cameras exist to protect the public and are a great thing, would you have wanted to live in the former Soviet Union or East Germany which employed many of them?

“No,” you say, “those cameras were installed by governments that were afraid of their own citizens and which used the threat of terrorists/subversives/whatever to keep the public docile and in line.”

To that, I reply, “Exactly.”

New York Plans Surveillance Veil for Downtown - New York Times

Cliff Schecter

You know, this blog is supposed to be about publicity stunts, promotions and me getting hired to invent same.  The trouble is that things that piss me off keep presenting themselves and begging me to write about them.

Yeah, it seems funny on the surface to arrest a woman for making faces at a police dog, but if you think about if for a minute, it really ain’t funny.

From my vantage point, it’s just another step along the path to making every act that can possibly be construed as objecting to any action on the part of an authority figure illegal.

I do have a suggestion for the woman in question, however, and it’s only half-unserious.  I say she goes to court and has her lawyer subpoena the dog to testify.  After all, the dog is the only one who can say whether her staring at him really made him feel intimidated, right?  The police started this joke; I think she should take it to the punchline.