Security cameras are everywhere. If you look for them, you can often see them – keeping an eye on places where people gather. Our banks, businesses, offices and schools – not to mention student housing – are under surveillance.
In 1948, author George Orwell wrote the dystopian novel “1984,” where an all-seeing, sadistic government attempted to control the hearts and minds of its subjects. A warning against totalitarian police states, the novel gave us phrases still in use today: Thoughtcrime was independent, and therefore illegal, thinking. Big Brother was the figurehead of the elite party, and the slogan “Big Brother is Watching You” was meant to be taken literally.
By controlling the media and even language, the despots behind Big Brother gave us such government offices as The Ministry of Peace (in charge of war) and The Ministry of Truth (in charge of propaganda, i.e., spin and outright lies).
Since Orwell could and did envision a world where the masses could be watched through their televisions, which were never turned off, it’s likely he would have understood the potential for countless surveillance cameras, and for everything else going on today: Telephone calls being monitored, emails being read and encrypted websites hacked.
Now we have drones to consider. One group, Kansans for Responsible Drone Use, asked the Lawrence City Council to pass a resolution that would ban the city from buying drones for its police department. This is not a frivolous request. The city leaders can protest that Lawrence does not have drones and has no plans to buy them in the foreseeable future, but they still weren’t ready to agree to a ban. After all, they might need drones some day.
The good news is, the Lawrence City Council did take a step of good faith, agreeing to develop a formal policy before using any drones in the future.
We find ourselves in a far better world than the one in Orwell’s “1984,” even as we create new ways to keep an eye on each other, snoop, control, protect and defend. The technology is neither good nor bad. As Orwell wrote in a letter in 1944, “I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 1936 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.”
And so, one day someone with our city, county, schools, community college or department of wildlife and parks may decide a drone is just what is needed. When that day comes, the public has a right to know about it and be part of the dialog.