They're Watching Us

My wife and I just love to check out web cams on the internet. We have our favorites. Cripple Creek Colorado, we try to get out there every summer. Pretty cool. There’s the Times Square cam. You can watch real time video. Yeah, that’s pretty cool too. We’ve watched drunks being arrested in New Orleans. The best one though had to be the time we saw this guy in Nashville picking his underwear out of his butt. That really cracked me up (pun intended). There he was, taking care of business and here we were, a thousand miles away watching him. Yeah, that’s pretty cool stuff.
We’ve watched people in every major city in the world, at least the one’s we could think of. After awhile we did a quick Google search for web cams. Bam! 55 million sights. This has to be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. We were literally able to watch people almost anywhere in the world.
After awhile it started creeping me out though. We were just watching them but it started to feel a little like spying. My wife says I’m over-reacting. Maybe, and yes, I know some of the people knew about a particular web cam and were actually waving at it. But take the guy pulling his underwear out of his butt. I really don’t think he had any idea we were watching him.
I do a lot of traveling around town on a daily basis, and yesterday was no different except I kept thinking about those 55 million web cams. I realized, maybe I wasn’t the only one who knew about them. That’s when I started wondering, who’s watching me. Or, how many people are watching all of us?
I know I’m probably over-reacting, but I pulled up to an ATM and saw five different security cameras. I headed to the local convenience store where I noticed four cameras recording my every move. I had to stop by one of our big retail stores on 37th street. Just on the front of the store I counted 16 cameras, I figured I might as well drive around the whole building. There were 22 in all, and this is just the outside of the building. If you’ll look up at the ceiling, you’ll notice all the smoke colored, bubble shaped panels. You guessed it, cameras. I lost count, but there were somewhere around 130 of them. Go to any casino. I’m guessing here, but I’d bet there will be no less than 500.
New cars offer this really cool feature called On-Star. I suppose it could come in handy if you had some kind of an emergency I guess. But it’s a little creepy knowing someone could find out where you are anytime they wanted. How about those satellites circling the earth 24 hours a day. I hear they can zoom down and pick up a license plate anytime they wanted. They’re implanting chips in our pets just in case they get lost. Pretty cool, but how long will it be before they start offering the same service for our children? I agree this could be a huge benefit should they ever become lost or something. But at what age will it be removed? Will it be removed at all? Has paranoia finally set it in? Probably.
It seems to me we’ve accepted, maybe even embraced the idea that business’s have the right to monitor our every move to protect their investment. We have no problem with the idea of someone like my wife and I doing it for kicks. We like the idea that someone can track our cars and pets anytime they want. But let Bush try to intercept a phone call from a potential terrorist who wants to kill us, and all hell breaks loose. Yeah, makes sense to me.
No, I’m not paranoid. I’m just an old guy who knows he‘s being watched. Have a good week.
Kevin McGinty can be reached at: kevinmcginty@sbcglobal.net