mandated telescreen upheld
From the dissent of this amazing opinion: "They approve an ordinance which literally forces a “Big Brother” style telescreen to look over one’s shoulder while accessing the Internet."
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Comments (8)
Hee hee! What a great opinion - the majority's footnotes got more and more exasperated as they went along. I was a little disappointed that the computer monitors weren't the actual telescreens, though.
I wonder how many faucets are required before the whole establishment is a bathroom equipped with computers? No video monitoring required in the bathrooms and I certainly find that more pleasant a prospect than the prospect of continuous video observation, which would substantially decrease my willingness to use the facility.
I find that I agree with the thrust of the arguments of the dissent: the city did far more than was required, in far more establishments than was required, and did impose undue restriction on a publication facility and those using it.
For me, an important lesson to learn from this decision lies in the last paragraph of Justice Sills' dissenting opinion. He writes:
Having heard those "soft judicial whispers of deference" in my practice, I feel Justice Sills has given us a meaningful warning to keep our eyes and ears open.
The elephant that neither opinion really addresses is the ability, under PATRIOT, of law enforcement to requisition access logs for the IPs of the the computers the cameras would be pointed at -- so this effectively would be a matter of being able to document that a specific person looked at a specific sequence of web pages; precisely that over-the-shoulder observation.
I was struck by how many different establishments could be substituted for "Internet Cafe" in the justifications behind that ordinance.
Hmm. Sounds like we need some more ordinances like this one. For one thing, I am outraged by the reports of criminal activities reported at banks. We can't go even one week in my town without a couple of robberies. Obviously, we shouldn't be allowing so many banks.
Also, convenience stores and gas stations attract far too many criminals. We need to close them down as well.
Small minds at work here.
Here is how telescreens will be mandated in homes. As soon as most people have availability of digital cable TV capable of supporting webcams via cable modems, parents of minor children will be routinely required to have webcams installed, ostensibly to "protect" their children from child abuse and/or domestic violence. The alternative will be noncompliance with the Service Plan, resulting in having one's children taken away by the court and placed in foster care (or subjected to a forced adoption). If you disbelieve that such a scenario is likely, then you probably have little experience with the lonely, politically incorrect legal specialty of attempting to assert the Constitutional rights of parents in California's juvenile dependency courts.
Judge Sills' brilliant comments so eerily and poignantly represent what I view as the ever subtle and continuing trend of American jurisprudence, compounded by the unsatiable appetite of the Court's perennial accomplice, the Legislature, to persist in eroding the everyday civil rights of our citizenry, transfering that power in real-time into the hands of our myriad institutions. Meanwhile, the masses cower to the cold comfort of a television set and its shocking images of violence dished up by our media outlets, then pat themselves on the back for the prudent decision to insulate themselves from the scary world, all the while hailing those political leaders that would continue to violate their freedom and privacy in the name of unattainable security. I want to start a new country called America but get it right this time...any suggestions?
Let's not forget the factor of decreasing cost and wide availability of the technologies mentioned. At some point in time there was only one telephone per village, then per house/building block, then per family, then per person and now most people have more than one telephone!