This week, the newspaper says, the town of Lowell is installing a $1,500 Panasonic video camera on a 200-foot cell tower. It will record the “south, west, north and portions of the east sides” 24 hours a day. Mayor Perry Long says, “It will be used for security, not for observation. We’re not in the observation business.” The mayor recently was in the news for fighting in court for rights to a horse-drawn stagecoach that the village uses for self-promotion.
Fire Chief Leroy Barker says access to images will be limited to the burg’s top emergency officials and protected by passwords and security codes. Police Chief Joe Landers says hamlet employees who share images or talk about them will be disciplined. His honor, however, is considering putting images on the Web or just on TV at the fire station so any resident can watch.
The camera is cheap, for a government budget outlay; installation was free, part of the agreement with the cell tower people.
Northwest Arkansas has monitoring cameras at street intersections. They’re fixed-focus and help the signal lights, I recall, though they could be programmed to take pictures of license plates of traffic-law violators. The article notes a number of cities nationwide have surveillance cameras. They’re numerous and obvious in London, which I observed in fall 2000. Of course stores and banks everywhere have had video for years. Every time I see my image in Wal-Mart I flip myself off, even though whoever’s watching might think I mean it for them.
Actually, I do.
Perry, Leroy and Joe — don’t you miss Shemp? — seem to worry specifically about public sex, public defecation and graffiti. The Lowellians interviewed don’t want what can be visible from above though behind their fences to be recorded. They don’t mention dogfights and profitable gardening, but being seen drinking beer.
Britain began invading privacy in the years-long process to stop deadly IRA attacks, and the cameras helped, and now has moved on to deadly al Qaida, where the cameras locate evidence and suspects.
I work in Lowell, and I feel safer now. -30-
