The Birth of My Paranoia

Growing up in a small to average sized town along the Mississippi, I had little to worry about when it came to surveillance.  The only time photo surveillance came into my life was at the local big box stores and the cameras in my high school.  I thought of these as more of a friendly security measure than any sort of threat to my privacy.  However, after I realized the extent to which voyeurs go to watch their “victims,” I started paying more attention to my surroundings.  Especially in restrooms and dressing rooms, I started looking in vents and became skeptical of large cracks in between the tiles—thinking that someone might have hidden a camera.  So far, my paranoia has not led to a dramatic revealing of any underground surveillance rings.  However, I persist. 

The cameras in my high school were covered by a translucent black semi-sphere.  The translucence allowed anyone standing underneath it to see which way the camera was pointing.  It became a game to my group of friends—seeing if we could predict the camera’s direction based on that of the previous day’s.  Mocking the system took away any fear we had of the cameras.  All authority was stripped.  

But how are we to do that when we can’t see where the camera is pointing?  How do we remain calm when we don’t know who is watching us or with what type of equipment?  How clearly defined are the images produced by the cameras?  Is there talk of putting low radiation x-ray machines in stores so that a security guard could see what is in our bags?  Maybe employees are already wearing smart-glasses that have video cameras and voice recognition devices in them capable of instant transmission to the local police authorities.

 These are the questions that plague my daily excursions into the “real” world.   I certainly am not up to date on the current trends in surveillance.  I don’t know what exactly the limits are of this frighteningly trusted technology.

The only thing of which I am positive is that most of the public is in the same boat as I am—none of us have any idea of how or how closely we’re being watched.  The only thing we do know is that there are cameras everywhere.  We have come to accept this as a fact of life and have modified our behavior around this knowledge.  This change in behavioral patterns has reached a massive scale that has led to an all over cultural change to which the rest of this blog will be dedicated.