Dear Friends,
It seems to me, Flock cameras and all general surveillance of the people inverts the role of government and citizen. In other words, in traditional systems of governance since the Enlightenment, the government is monitored by the people. Moreover, the government’s role has evolved to be a servant of the people. Indeed, that’s the premise and justification of all great society, welfare, and socialist ideas. A government that monitors everyone all the time doesn’t serve the people and is not under the control of the people. That government can exploit selective prosecution to keep citizens in line. This removes all oversight and flips the incentive structure. If government is supposed to be accountable the people, mass surveillance makes the people accountable to government… inverting the roles.
Government abuses every power it’s given. That’s not politics it’s human nature. The more unaccountable it is the more it will abuse its power. Government is made up of people so it has the characteristic of people. It has a mind but not morality. Bureaucracy breeds conformists. This means most people in government simply do what they are told. They surrender their agency to the government they serve. That makes them a cell in a brain. Such a person lends their processing power but not their morality to the emergent government mind. Every action is justified as being in the name of the people… especially those acts that tyrannize the people. The result is, with a mind but no morality every power allowed to government will eventually be abused by government.
Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime. I have read that everyone commits three felonies a day. That means we are an unconvicted felons. Oh I can hear many of you scoffing. “I haven’t committed a crime in my life!” many of you are thinking. But yes my dears, you have. The canon of law is so extensive that the average man or woman going about their daily life cannot but commit crimes. Ignorance is no excuse under the law remember. Unless you are a lawyer, judge, or write law. Then ignorance is a perfectly acceptable excuse. But not for you and I. In the Code Of Federal Regulations there are over one hundred and seventy five thousand pages. They regulate every aspect of our lives. That they aren’t enforced is why we tolerate them. Surveillance gives them teeth.
Have you noticed that the more we are surveilled by government, the more everything government does is hidden? The default is to hid everything government does. It takes a freedom of information lawsuit to get anything from them… and they still deny us that information they want to remain hidden. JFK was murdered 63 years ago and many records are still classified despite a presidential order. This is called open transparency. Meanwhile, that same government wants to monitor us at all times? A government that insists on keeping all its machinations hid from oversight, is one that can’t be trusted. Never mind recent history. What it amounts to is our governments work in the dark but want a spotlight on us. In the end we all know that not one rape, murder, or robbery will be stopped.
A better system would be to monitor those in power with total surveillance. Aim the surveillance up instead of down. The power to punish demands the greatest scrutiny. Confucius said that people follow their leaders. So if we monitor our leaders with an eye to keeping them moral, honest, and hold them to their own laws, they will lead us by example to be more moral, honest, and law abiding. The stated results of total surveillance would be met at a fraction of the cost. Constitutional rights would remain intact and the role of government and citizen would be reaffirmed… not inverted. If government is open by default, our leaders would have to be more ethical. More ethical leaders set and ethical example and so… our society would follow and be more ethical… thus more law abiding, prosperous, and free.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
