America has an infatuation with the idea that any problem can be solved (cheaper!) with technology.
People dumping trash in your yard? Put up a camera. Drivers running down your kids when they exit school buses? Add some cameras to the bus. Drivers running redlights? Put up redlight cameras. Drivers changing lanes like maniacs and shooting at other drivers? Ummm... wait for us to install cameras; cops are too expensive.
Track your kids
Jesus! Just try Googling "Nanny Cam". Does no one give a second thought to wiring their house with 30 camera to spy on the "nanny"? If you think you can't trust the nanny, why are you letting them watch your kids?
(I'll save you my rants on personal privacy, but like Scott McNealy said, personal privacy is dead. Forget it.)
Drivers and other annoyances can be covered with the Band-Aid of video, but what if your problem is more severe, say, bad foreign policy, for example?
Suppose you're a government trying to solve a nagging problem of re-election by distracting the voters with an illegitmate and unneeded war. The downside is that the populace gets cranky when you start killing them off ( that's *your* populace, not *theirs*. You don't need *their* votes.) Solution? Send in the 'droids!
That will finally make war clean. No more messy pictures of "coalition" (ahem) troops getting killed by fuzzy foreigners that don't like being occupied. Finally get some peace around here...
USA Today
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