Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Can cameras in downtown Dallas look up?

Can new surveillance cameras in Dallas peer into windows of downtown buildings? Robert Wilonsky at Unfair Park poses the question, following up on a readers' query.

Wilonsky quotes a downtown apartment dweller who swears a nearby camera can peer into her window, asking, "would YOU want City Hall to have the ability to see you lounging around your house in your weekend worst, sans bra or shirt, as you were doing daily relaxing activities around your home?"

Uh ... well, maybe if you're Harold Hurtt?

My advice: Don't worry, ma'am. I'm sure the snot-nosed 18-year old security guard monitoring the video feed won't have any improper thoughts!

RELATED: Dallas cops share surveillance tapes with private businesses, and Police surveillance cameras zoom half a mile.

UPDATE: More from Unfair Park.

3 comments:

800 pound gorilla said...

Ya know that they can catch anyone using arbitrarily banned drugs too. Of course in Britain over half the population still smokes highly addictive - but legal - cigarettes. And 90% of illegal drugs are smoked. Get the connection. Anyone who rolls their own to save money on the highly taxed [re: sock it to the addict mentality of legisliars] cigarettes is an automatic suspect of "drug use" [as if smoking cigarettes isn't drug use because it isn't "mind altering" - until you have to pay ridiculous prices for your addiction]. Of course being soused with alcohol during your down time might be interesting to any political opponents or colleagues/supervisors. It's amazing how much of our personal lives are becoming relevant as we compete for the dwindling number of living wage jobs. Of course our aristocracy doesn't have THAT problem - and they own our legisliars.

Anonymous said...

In Britain, we're the most filmed and monitored of all Europeans too. But you rarely notice it. The thought here is, if you're not doing anything wrong, then it doesnt matter if you're being filmed ~ but in Texas where just about everything is wrong, I can see why it would worry people more.

Anonymous said...

To sunray wench:

George Orwell wrote a book about you.