Time to Blind Big Brother

New York City's head tyrant is planning to install hundreds more surveillance cameras to "protect" people on the streets. (No doubt he will soon be followed by his clones in other cities.) Add these to the hundreds already out there, and the thousands of private cameras which are aimed out of their property, and are therefore optically "trespassing", and you have a situation where there is no privacy. This is an intolerable situation. It is a situation that can be solved, though. Make it more expensive to maintain these eyes than they are worth, or make the cameras worthless for the enforcers or as a psychological control tool.

Blinding the cameras is justified, but how? I would never encourage anyone to commit a crime.... Shooting the cameras is tricky since it is often impossible to do without endangering people or property behind the target. Vaseline paintballs are too easily cleaned up. Spray paint doesn't have the necessary range. Lasers are mostly ineffective, especially for the cameras which filter out certain wavelengths of light. However, government does not feel the pinch when paying for new cameras every month. After all, the money doesn't come out of their pockets; it is stolen from you and me.

I have no qualms about blinding government cameras, but privately owned ones .... any type of private property.... should be sacred. The problem is that the owners of those private cameras are only too anxious to hand over their videos to the enforcers, becoming a partner to the oppression. They also aim their cameras across the street or at the crossroads nearby instead of on their own property. They should be given a chance to redirect or remove their cameras, unless they have a clear history or aiding tyranny.

Perhaps there is another way to make those cameras worthless, but I doubt it. Disguises would make you a "person of interest" everywhere you went, unless you were an expert makeup artist. The little dramas and plays acted out for the cameras in some cities have done nothing to make the public aware and enraged. Too many people falsely believe that being watched unceasingly makes them safe. It doesn't work in London; it won't work anywhere.

I think the real value of the cameras (for tyrants) is the psychological effect on people who know they are being watched constantly. Government is not truly concerned with preventing or solving crimes, but only in getting people to "sit down and shut up!" Cameras seem to be very effective at that. It's time to stand up and be LOUD.