Houston Police Chief Wants Surveillance Cameras In Private Homes

Orwellian telescreens will monitor your behavior
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Feb. 16, 2006

The age of the telescreen is upon us as surveillance cameras that festoon our streets, shopping malls and airports are now moving into our private homes as the panopticon prison is erected.

The Associated Press reports,

"HOUSTON Houston's police chief is suggesting putting surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets and even private homes."

"Chief Harold Hurtt today said it's another way of combatting crime amid a shortage of officers.

Scott Henson with the American Civil Liberties Union calls Hurtt's proposal to require surveillance cameras as part of some building permits -- "radical and extreme."

In the meantime, Homeland Security grants are being used to blanket major cities and even small sleepy communities with arsenals of spy cameras.

All over the United States, Canada and Britain, surveillance camera systems are being installed on street corners, in public bathrooms, in residential neighborhoods, and even in parks and forests. We are asked to trust the government underlings who control them that they are working for our best interests as said underlings are caught using the cameras to spy on naked women in their homes.

In the UK, government programs encourage citizens to spy on their neighbors and report suspicious activity as part of a CCTV channel subscriber package.

Homeland Security funding is being utilized to fund this mass expansion of the surveillance state in the US as city and state officials clamor at the teat of Big Brother to milk the cash cow of the police state and win the contracts for installing more and more sophisticated spy cameras.

The government demands to know everything about our private lives and catalogue, file and index every aspect of our existence, yet government itself becomes more and more secret with each passing day as it engages in escalating criminal activities.

The agenda behind surveillance cameras is not simply to track the movements of certain individuals. There are not enough watchers to catalogue all the information. The cameras are about behavior control and creating an omnipresent atmosphere whereby the citizen consciously regulates his own behavior so as not to seem suspicious. The surveillance cameras are there to make a statement. We are the prison guards, you are the prisoners.

As George Orwell described it in 1984,

"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard."

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

This is the prison without bars. This is the panopticon, a prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen. This is a portrait of the accelerating movement by western governments to erect giant, powerful, all-pervading mass surveillance, tracking and control grids that will keep all populations firmly under the baleful and watchful gaze of Big Brother.

Houston eyes cameras at apartment complexes

ASSOCIATED PRESS

HOUSTON -- Houston's police chief on Wednesday proposed placing surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets, shopping malls and even private homes to fight crime during a shortage of police officers.

"I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?" Chief Harold Hurtt told reporters Wednesday at a regular briefing.

Houston is facing a severe police shortage because of too many retirements and too few recruits, and the city has absorbed 150,000 hurricane evacuees who are filling apartment complexes in crime-ridden neighborhoods. The City Council is considering a public safety tax to pay for more officers.

Continued

Related:

Blair's baby Asbos: Families face being removed from their homes and housed in special 'sin bin' residential units guarded by security officers and monitored by CCTV

Control Grid: The Prison Without Bars: 1984 was a picnic compared to modern day leviathan surveillance cage

The Panopticon: A Mass Surveillance Prison For Humanity

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