Smile, You Might Be on Candid Camera

I am thinking more George Orwell than Allen Funt.

The Washington Post published Rethinking Surveillance last week with suggestions for federal laws to:

¿ Ensure that surveillance technologies satisfy their mission for crime and terror control without the potential for misuse.

¿ Reassure the public that their images are being collected for bona fide objectives, and that there are penalties for those who misuse surveillance recordings.

¿ Promote the adoption of open standards to ensure interoperability, which in turn would promote the introduction of emerging technologies.

The writer suggested the need for such legislation is clear and suggested looking at Britain:

Britain's experience has been helped by legislation passed 10 years ago that put public surveillance under national control. The Data Protection Act of 1998 set clear and consistent guidelines for video monitoring of public spaces, and created the information commissioner's office as the regulatory authority. A code of practice established privacy principles, provided guidelines for safeguarding the use of video images and gave industry a framework for doing business.

Speaking of Great Britain, The Sunday Herald published Top Scottish lawyers: we’re 'all being bugged'

"The legal figures have told the Sunday Herald that police and customs are eavesdropping phone and face-to-face conversations with criminals in prisons and elsewhere, including police stations, on a regular basis UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw has launched an inquiry into allegations that Labour MP Sadiq Khan's conversations with a terrorist suspect who was a constituent were monitored in Woodhill Prison, Bedford."
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Despite a statement from the Justice Ministry that covert listening operations were a matter for the police in line with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, leading QC Gareth Peirce and shadow home secretary David Davis said the fresh allegations merited another inquiry.

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Leading advocate Paul McBride, QC, said: For a number of years now, many counsel and solicitors dealing with high profile or sensitive cases, have been suspicious that their private consultations in prison are being listened into by others illegally and that their mobile phones are also the subject of eavesdropping.

For more decades than I like, I have always been puzzled by the political party claiming less government intrusion into our lives favoring the taping, bugging, watching of its citizens by that same government who is too intrusive. Thankfully, we have George W. Bush to show us the truth. Immunity for the telecoms trumps national security. Sharp Exchanges Over Surveillance Law.