Cameras at Intersections Erode Right to Privacy

There is something fundamentally wrong with putting American citizens under surveillance. This was my initial reaction when I first read that the Ventura City Council, in conjunction with the Police Department, was entertaining the idea of placing video cameras at certain intersections in our fair city.

I was listening to “The Bill Handel Show” on the radio recently. He got my attention because he was talking about the issue of personal privacy. He spoke of the huge databases containing all sorts of information on all of us and the inevitability of having the government (and anyone else who is willing to pay the price) know everything there is about us. He then presented the question: What can we do about this situation? His conclusion was that we could do nothing, aside from passing laws to make sure that the information is not used in a way contrary to our welfare.

As usual, I disagree. We are the greatest nation on earth. I do not care what the United Nations says. I believe that the God of the Bible gave us this great land. Because of our belief in freedom, we have slain Nazism and communism. We are very close to eliminating racism. We have been blessed with the greatest Constitution in the world. This Constitution is based on Judeo-Christian ethics. I am convinced that we can overcome these insidious attempts to co-opt our personal privacy.

An official from Oxnard mentioned that the cameras are only to monitor traffic violations. No big deal? Yes, it is a big deal because the giving away of our right to privacy in this one instance is not isolated. We are constantly being stripped of our liberty in tiny increments. Seat belt laws; motorcycle helmet laws; bans on smoking in private establishments; laws forbidding landlords to charge fair-market rent; Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) restrictions; cameras in malls, stores, restaurants, public squares, bus terminals, airports and train stations; laws against law-abiding citizens possessing handguns, rifles and shotguns designed for self defense . . . .

As residents of Ventura County, we need to make sure that our community is preserved as a haven for personal liberty. Why care about how Los Angeles, San Francisco or any other city manages its affairs? With the standards of conservative values, such as personal accountability and effort, smaller government, lower taxes, parental rights and the keeping of firearms for self-defense, we have made Ventura County one of the safest places in all of California. Let’s not become a police state like Los Angeles or Washington, D.C.

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Do not let our City Council take away our rights and liberties. They will, by virtue of our silence, think they are doing our business as they vote away our freedom. That is the nature of the beast of government. By passing more laws public officials make themselves more necessary as the custodians of the laws they pass. Lawmaking is their job security. We need to keep our public officials under our control and not vice versa.