Chicago's Panopticon and 7 Other Ways We're Being Watched

From the Windy City to airports to our phones, the surveillance state is expanding in disturbing ways -- and with little objection

The photograph above was taken inside the Chicago Emergency Communication Center, where government employees monitor the streets using roughly 10,000 cameras placed throughout the city. Thanks to Jacob Sullum at Reason I came across the ACLU's apt objection to the program:

While earlier camera systems tracked only how some people spend some of their time in the public way, a camera on every corner -- coupled with pan-tilt-zoom, facial recognition, and automatic tracking -- results in government power to track how all people

Each of us then will wonder whether the government is watching and recording us when we walk into a psychiatrist's office, a reproductive health care center, a political meeting, a theater performance, or a book store. While the dystopia described by George Orwell in "1984" has not yet been realized, Chicago's current 10,000 surveillance cameras are a significant step in this direction. And a camera "on every corner" would be an even greater step.

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