Big Brother & Pynchon

[pynchonoid]

Florida town to use blanket of surveillance cameras
MANALAPAN, Fla. (AP) — One of the nation's wealthiest
towns will soon have cameras and computers running
background checks on every car and driver that passes
through.

Police Chief Clay Walker said cameras will take
infrared photos recording a car's tag number, then
software will automatically run the numbers through
law enforcement databases. A 911 dispatcher is alerted
if the car is stolen or is the subject of a "be on the
lookout" warning.

Next to the tag number, police will have a picture of
the driver, taken with another set of cameras —
upgraded versions of the standard surveillance cameras
already in place.

If there is a robbery, police will be able to comb
records to determine who drove through town on a given
afternoon or evening.

"Courts have ruled that in a public area, you have no
expectation of privacy," said Walker, one of 11 sworn
officers who protects Manalapan's 321 residents.
Still, Walker says Manalapan's data will be destroyed
every three months.

Manalapan's town council authorized $60,000 in
security upgrades last week after three burglaries
this winter robbed residents of $400,000 in jewelry.
The town averages two or three burglaries per year and
residents demanded swift response, Town Manager
Gregory Dunham said.

The 2000 Census listed Manalapan, about 15 miles south
of West Palm Beach, among the nation's richest cities,
with two out of every three homes worth more than
$500,000.

Contributing: Information from: The Miami Herald.

<http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+Florida+town+to+use+blanket+of+surveillance+cameras&expire=&urlID=10059403&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Ftech%2Fnews%2F2004-04-27-rich-people-shun-privacy_x.htm&partnerID=1664>

[...] The other day in the street I heard a policeman
in a police car, requesting over his loudspeaker that
a civilian car blocking his way move aside and let him
past, all the while addressing the drive of the car
personally, by name. I was amazed at this, though
people I tried to share it with only shrugged,
assuming that of course the driver's name (along with
height, weight and date of birth) had been obtained
from the Motor Vehicle Department via satellite, as
soon as the offending car's license number had been
tapped into the terminal -- so what?
Stone Junction was first published in 1989, toward the
end of an era still innocent, in its way, of the
cyberworld just ahead about to exponentially explode
upon it. To be sure, there were already plenty of
computers around then, but they were not quite so
connected together as they were shortly to become.
Data available these days to anybody were accessible
then only to the Authorized, who didn't always know
what they had or what to do with it. There was still
room to wiggle -- the Web was primitive country,
inhabited only by a few rugged pioneers, half loco and
wise to the smallest details of their terrain. Honor
prevailed, laws were unwritten, outlaws, as yet
undefinable, were few. The question had only begun to
arise of how to avoid, or, preferably, escape
altogether, the threat, indeed promise, of control
without mercy that lay in wait down the comely vistas
of freedom that computer-folk were imagining then -- a
question we are still asking. Where can you jump in
the rig and head for any more -- who's out there to
grant us asylum? If we stay put, what is left to us
that is not in some way tainted, coopted, and
colonized, by the forces of Control, usually digital
in nature? Does anybody know the way to William
Gibson's "Republic of Desire?" Would they tell if they
knew? So forth. [...]
<http://www.libyrinth.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_stone.html>


	
		
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