This article in the (paywalled) Philadelphia Inquirer says people in neighborhoods with large numbers of shootings are asking for more police cameras. I surprises me a little because it goes against the idea that people in these neighborhoods do not trust the police. This would support the idea that people want to be policed, i.e. protected from violence, as long as they feel they are being policed fairly. A certain level of fear seems to be the tipping point where people are more willing to give up some privacy in return for safety.

People want violent crimes to be solved and violent people to be brought to justice. They don’t want to be harassed. So it’s a fine line – police could use these cameras along with facial recognition to track people on probation or parole, for example, or even just people who have been arrested in the past. I don’t know if police are allowed to access driver’s license or passport photo databases, but if they are they could probably track anybody. I’m not paranoid about these things because the technology of tyranny has clearly existed for some time, and we have to work through our political system to make sure our rights are protected. We are hearing that there is “no constitutional right to privacy”. As wonderful as our 18th century founding fathers were, they could not have imagined these technologies. Maybe it is time for a 21st century bill of rights.