OK, follow along with me while we get run over by the logic train. Digital cameras continue to drop in price. There's no reason to believe that will stop before they hit, say, $0.50 each. Likewise with low end computing power and wireless network access. Wireless access is becoming more ubiquitous, including such possibilities as mesh networking.

A couple of killer apps for a high-quality networked miniature camera that cost less than $5 might be to watch over your car, home and child while you're away, or warn you when known criminals come near them, or let you look in on them whenever. Or to keep with you all the time so you can record your child's first steps, for example, even though you weren't expecting them.

But, you say, there's not a publicly available database of all known criminals, and there won't be - at least not one available to the general public. But when you have cheap cameras everywhere, and people willing to tag an image "this guy is a child molester", then there will be such a database, whether the government sanctions it or not. Every public space, and many private ones, will be monitored much of the time, by people who upload their camera information in return for access to the information others upload. Enough people will be willing to tag someone cut_me_off_in_traffic or child_molester or cheats_at_cards, that these databases will exist. And the next step is tagging someone, well, everyone really, with their name, and address, and license plate number. And where they were at 9:15pm Tuesday night. It doesn't require a lot of effort on anyone's part - just tiny amounts of effort on the part of millions.

I am a big advocate of privacy, at least from the government. I don't care for the provisions of the Patriot Act that let the FBI request my library records and put a gag order on librarians to prevent people from even knowing a request was made, much less for whom. But I think this kind of "democratic" uber-surveillance is unavoidable. I also think that once we get used to it, it will be for the better.

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