Are video cameras hostile to liberty?

Raise your hand if you think security cameras in public places erode individual liberty. The right to privacy, for example.

Now set aside the distinction between anonymity and privacy, which some Libertarians do, and consider the cases where cameras have helped catch bad people. And here we define bad people as extremely hostile to individual liberty (murderers, rapists, terrorists).

• Most recently, security cameras identified Faisal Shahzad, the would-be terrorist of Times Square in April 2010.
• The murder of Sandra Cantu in early 2009, now in the headlines because the alleged killer confessed, was partially solved using surveillance camera images of Sandra skipping to play at the killer's home.
• Joseph Smith would still be free but for a security camera which filmed him with a girl he murdered in February 2004: "Smith's friends and co-workers testified that he was the tattooed man pictured in a surveillance video from a car wash security camera who grabbed Carlie's wrist and led her away."

Surveillance has both an enforcement effect and a deterrent effect. As for the erosion of privacy from this new technology, it exists only by conflating the definition of privacy with that of anonymity. And American society does not recognize a right to anonymity. Privacy in the public sphere strikes me as oxymoronic.

We can anticipate a rapid increase in public surveillance in the years ahead, and I think that's an almost unadulterated good. Every time a reckless driver zooms past you on the highway, don't you wish he could be ticketed automatically? Instead, we rely on random chance that a police vehicle will be hidden, identify the reckless driver, and pursue him/her successfully. Wouldn't a better world identify every reckless driver and pacify the roads? Remember, more Americans die every year from traffic accidents than died during the entire Vietnam war.

Add/view comments on this post.

------------------------------

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.