Big Brother in the Big Apple

Though the lion's share of publicity surrounding Tony Blair's recent departure as Britain's prime minister focused on his legacy as George W. Bush's top foreign cheerleader,a more lasting legacy for Mr. Blair's lengthy tenure as Britain's chief "decider"will be that he greatly accelerated Great Britain's ascendancy to the position of the "most surveilled"society in the world.Still,Michael Bloomberg,the Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent mayor of New York is giving Mr. Blair a run for the money as the most surveillance-hungry public official in the world.Even though officials in other cities are embracing and installing surveillance cameras in huge numbers-Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C., to name a few-the latest plan unveiled by Mr. Bloomberg and his equally surveillance-enamored police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, leaves these other American cities in the surveillance dust. Truly what we are witnessing being created here is a 21st-century Panopticon.The Panopticon, as envisaged by British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), was a society (initially proposed as a prison) in which surreptitious surveillance of the citizenry was always possible and ever-known.Control was exercised not by being surveilled continuously but by each person knowing they might be under surveillance at any time, or all the time....
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As in the days of Noah....