Town considers forcing bars to install always-on cop cams, Bill of Rights yells "LAST CALL!"
Wisconsin Reporter / Watchdog.org. Click for story.
Like father, like son. Hey, if the NSA can do it, why can't we? A Wisconsin town council is considering an ordinance that would require every bar owner to install cameras, record every patron that comes in and out of the bar, store the video for 21 days, and......here's the kicker...make the video "available to law enforcement at any time."
This law would brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "chilling effect."
Order a beer, have your picture taken and filed away as a police record. Finally, a story that might get folks attention about the surveillance problem. It's not an opinion, it's a law: law enforcement's appetite for surveillance technology is voracious -- no, it's infinite -- and won't be curtailed until someone dusts off the Bill of Rights and reads it with 21st Century eyeballs.
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"It is the intent of the city council...to provide for a high level of supervision in the retail sale and safe consumption of intoxicating beverages," says the ordinance, being considered by the Chippewa Falls Common Council, according to a copy posted online by the Wisconsin Reporter. Cameras must be placed 9-12 feet in the air, and record "all areas open to the public including any entrance doors as well as all check out and register areas. " The cameras must be on whenever the business is open.
Speaking for folks on both sides of the bar, Weekend at Bernie's owner Bernie LaVelle told the Wisconsin Reporter, "The government is controlling everything now and every aspect of our lives, and I just don’t like the way they are going with everything. They just keep jamming (expletive deleted) down our throats.”
Of course, many bars already have video equipment installed for "inventory control" purposes. You can tell right away what kind "friendly" environment you are in by looking at how many cameras are trained at the cash register. Yes, I know there's usually a silent owner somewhere in the basement, or at a remote Florida location, skeezing on employees and patrons through remote IP cameras. The cameras do settle some bar fights, but I still don't like them. I really don't like that owners have the right to keep such video indefinitely.
Forcing bar owners to install high-angle, 1984-style cameras and make their contents available to cops at any time is an altogether different thing. Patrons at least have a relationship with the bar owner, and can choose another bar that has less intrusive electronics. A camera-everywhere law means there will be no place to hide (your beer).
A side effect....actually, a direct effect....of our 'meh' reaction to NSA surveillance and the Snowden revelations is accelerated surveillance creep by state and local law enforcement. I promise you, legions of local government officials spent the past 18 months getting bright ideas, inspired by all the data collection that the FBI and NSA are getting away with. That's how it works. I've been to law enforcement trade shows. I know how the locals geek out on new gadgets. Every time you see a new 4WD search and rescue vehicle in a hill-free suburban town, think inside about how much money that town must be spending on surveillance gear.
Yes, yes, people who are drinking could be up to no good. OK, they are probably up to no good. A certain segment of the population would have no problem filming the whole lot of them and throwing them in jail for having fun. Please understand this is the next slip in the slippery slope. Go ahead, molest all airline passengers, they have no rights. They are flying! After all we're hunting terrorists. Go ahead, listen to those foreigners' phone calls. They have no rights, they're foreigners! Go ahead, read our emails. After all, they are just emails. Go ahead, film our cars slinking through yellow lights and take $100 from us. After all, those are lawbreakers. Go ahead, film inside bars, drinking isn't a very upstanding thing to do anyway. Go ahead, put a camera in my house, I have beer there, too. After all, I'm not doing anything wrong!
By the way, the "nothing to hide" argument would be great if it applied to everyone. As Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center noted recently, wouldn't it be nice if government agencies lived by the "nothing to hide" principal? Try filing a Freedom of Information Act request and see how much these surveillance agencies believe in Nothing the Hide.
I promise you, it's not stopping until .... we stop it. America needs to take a very sober look at individual rights to our own images, and our right to be free from being watched, before America isn't America anymore. I deserve to have a drink without the government watching, and if you don't think so, I don't think we should live in the same country.