Thanks for the kind comments about my earlier post.

A personal anecdote:

When The Man From U.N.C.L.E hit the airwaves in 1964, I was a huge fan. I loved that show! But several times in the series, Thrush agents infiltrated U.N.C.L.E headquarters, and once inside they were free to steal secrets, commit sabotage, and even kill U.N.C.L.E agents anywhere in the building with impunity. It took most of the hour for Napoleon and Ilya to identify the miscreants and bring them down.

I was 15 years old at the time. I could never understand why U.N.C.L.E didn't have cameras mounted in every room, closet, and hallway of the HQ, so that all activities within the building could be monitored - if not being in real time, at least getting it recorded, so that when the first bloody corpse is found, the enforcement agents of Section II would know immediately what happened. Made sense to me.

Move ahead two years to my first year in college, and the Written English course in which I had to read several dystopian novels, including Darkness at Noon, Brave New World, and Nineteen-Eighty-Four. I hadn't actually considered the ramifications of living - even during an 8-hour workday - with someone watching my every move. It was an eye-opener.

Thanks to George Orwell for creating the phrase "Big Brother is Watching" and outlining the evils 24/7 surveillance by the government. People will not stand for official monitoring of the people.

Back to the present day:

Now I'm a big fan of the TV show "Law & Order" - the original, not the SVU and CI crap. Watching, however, I became aware that the government doesn't have to install cameras to watch its citizens. The private sector has done the job for them. When a crime is committed on L&O, the police canvass the neighborhood at the scene of the crime. They are empowered to confiscate - as evidence - tapes from the omnipresent security cameras that constantly scan every business entrance, parking lot, alleyway, and bank ATM. Between them and those from traffic cameras mounted at every street intersection, a suspect can be back-tracked minute-by-minute all over the city. And it's all legal. It was another eye-opener.