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Our Own Big Brother – CCTV

The first closed circuit television camera was installed during World War II in Germany. These days they are everywhere including in homes. They protect us, report on us and are used to take care of us. Its our Big Brother just like Orwell wrote about.

In the late 1960s a few towns started to use CCTV along streets which were particularly crime ridden, and it worked. Many cities started using them as a new way to fight crime.
Banks, stores, gas stations and just about every business has now added them. Even though these cameras are personally invasive if you think about it, they have been widely accepted by the public. In the United Kingdom, there was a successful report entitled CCTV: Looking Out For You. For that country, it started a rolling tide of the use of cameras. As of today, it is factual that the camera to people ratio is 1:14. That means they are everywhere! And while theres evidence that the cameras do little to deter crime, there is even more that they do nothing. Web cams are now becoming equally as popular and as technology both are notoriously vulnerable to hackers and criminals. Theres very little regulation, court cases involving civil liberties have not held up, and the practice continues to grow. TV shows like Big Brother make light of constant surveillance but the voyeur in all us like watching it. But all this fantastic technology is also leading to groups who are protesting the privacy invasion. In several countries, watchdog groups have been formed to monitor just how much of a human rights issue some monitoring has become.

Perhaps we are not just accepting of the use of CCTV like sheep, but see that some good does come of it. If you arent doing anything wrong, then should we even care if Big Brother is watching? video art