The [Insert Your Name Here] Show

I just rewatched The Truman Show and was struck by how the world satirically predicted in that film 10 years ago has increasingly come to manifest. I'm not just talking about the growing domination of popular culture by "reality" TV shows such as American Idol, Project Runway and even the pure embarrassment that is Celebrity Rehab. Rather, I'm talking about the reality TV show starring you — the one in which you're caught on camera roughly 500 time a day. That's not a random number. It's the number of times the average American citizen is videotaped by cameras in ATM's, gas stations, stoplights and other subtle public surveillance stations, according to a recent study (I'd link, but Drudge took it down, the bastard).

An article on Military.com (and wouldn't you love to own that domain name) explores the extent to which high-tech surveillance is penetrating our daily interactions without our knowledge (let alone our acquiesence). It's well worth a read. For those of you who doubt the slipperiness of the slope, here's an interesting excerpt:

"This may sound like a privacy wonk's paranoia. But examples abound. Take E-ZPass. Drivers signed up for the system to speed up toll collection. But 11 states now supply E-ZPass records -- when and where a toll was paid, and by whom -- in response to court orders in criminal cases. Seven of those states provide information in civil cases such as divorce, proving, for instance, that a husband who claimed he was at a meeting in Pennsylvania was actually heading to his lover's house in New Jersey. (New York divorce lawyer Jacalyn Barnett has called E-ZPass the "easy way to show you took the offramp to adultery.")"

Of course, an active and informed citizenry could rise up and speak out against these incursions into our privacy. But considering the fact that off-handed remark I made calling something "Orwellian" at the gym the other day was met with "Oh, yeah, I remember that book" by the guy scanning cards behind the counter, I'm not holding my breath.

As Ben Franklin (or possibly Richard Jackson) wrote two centuries ago, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."