From: nobody@huge.cajones.com (Huge Cajones Remailer)
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:03:42 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: VideoWorld Justice
Message-ID: <199705130319.UAA03346@fat.doobie.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>From "Video Justice" TV show:
  "The video camera has evolved from passive observer to active
participant" (in the war on crime).

  Golly gee, government wants to use video cameras to monitor citizens
everywhere, all the time, and now we have a primetime TV show dedicated
to convincing the citizens that the surveillance camera is their best
friend. What a coincidence!

  With a dozen TV shows already championing law enforcement personnel
with neatly pressed uniforms saving the citizens from bad guys wearing
T-shirts, its refreshing to see fresh propaganda which informs us that
surveillance technology is our new best friend.
  It was so enlightening to hear criminologists and prosecutors praise
the emotional charge generated by seeing perpetrators "laugh" as they
"terrorized" people by shooting them with paintball guns resulting in
their receiving four years in prison instead of the one year that the
prosecutor expected.
  ( 4 perps x 4 years x $65,000/year = > $ 1,000,000.00 of taxpayer
money spent to incarcerate people who splatter someone with paint and
laugh about it. If Tim May owns a paintball gun, then I guess that he
can add to his list of potential felonies.)

  We also learn that surveillance cameras are "Invaluable weapons of 
enforcement in government stings" and that "The evidence they provide 
is incontestable."
  It sounds like we will no longer need judges and juries once the
citizens are fully monitored.
  We are told that John Law is protected from claims of entrapment
by the irrefutable evidence provided by their video taping of the
government sting. Naturally, we only see a selective two minute
tape of the entire operation. No video/sound recording of the setup
of the victim/criminal is shown.

  There was no video shown of police brutality (ala Rodney King) and
no questioning of why the technology is only geared toward showing
what goes on in front of the camera, leaving the citizen unprotected
once the officer takes him or her out its visual range.
  (Of course, any deviation from the "Sainthood of Authority" script
would result in the show's producers losing access to the cheap source
of their video propaganda.)

  Where is the legislation being put forth to require law enforcement
personnel under video surveillance to prevent them from engaging in
crimes against the citizens? Harassing them, beating them, becoming 
the source of crack flowing into their neighborhoods, spending hours
and days manipulating them into a two-minute video scene which is 
staged to provide "incontestable evidence" of their guilt.
  Video cameras are commonplace to watch the citizens in banks in
case someone tries to "steal" a few hundred or a few thousand
dollars. Where are the video cameras that watch the bankers in
order to provide evidence of their possible criminal actions?

  Video surveillance technology is the same old story. Provide a few
emotionally charged scenes to scare the citizens, offer them a form
of "protection" and then institute the technology in a one-way
vector which points only at those on the bottom of the food chain.
  Same technological shit, different day.

TruthMonger