And now for another lovely article from the Tin Foil Hat club, of which I am a charter member. (Yes, that’s a joke, but the rest of this article isn’t.)
It’s too easy these days for one to get totally freaked out by the sheer amount of surveillance there is out there.
On just about any interstate in America, you’re on camera. At every toll booth, you’re on camera. At Wal-Mart, Dunkin’ Donuts, Target, every mall and just about every convenience store, you’re on camera. There are really not many places you can go without being under the lens, so to speak.
Most people can accept the cameras that are out there. But the really unnerving thing (and if this doesn’t concern you, it should) are the estimated 30,000 surveillance drones that will be flying around by 2020. If you thought you didn’t have any privacy now, ha! Just wait.
There is a simple solution if you want to stay off the lens (somewhat), and that’s to live in a low-populated town. No, I’m not talking about living in the mountains. I’m specifically referring to living in a town that has a population of under 10,000 people.
As much as some people freak out about surveillance, the one thing they never talk about is that it costs money. Tons of money. This is the reason we don’t all have “chipped” RFID driver’s licenses yet, because the tech simply costs too much to deploy and maintain (and it’s the maintenance that’s the true cost, by the way).
Small towns for the most part don’t have money to invest in surveillance tech, nor do they want to because there’s no need for it. It’s been proven time and time again that when a state says, “Every town must have X surveillance tech installed”, the smaller towns always reply with, “Okay, fine. YOU pay for it, bucko.” The matter is dropped rather quickly after that and the tech is never installed.
As far as drones are concerned, I could understand seeing them flying over Tampa, FL, but not over a place like, say, Caribou, ME. No offense to any residents of Caribou who might read this, but let’s face it, you guys are known for being the most northeastern city in the US, and potato and brocolli crops. Not exactly something worth flying drones over. And although this is just a guess, I’m fairly certain the US Govt. has no interest in Caribou spuds.
If you want to be out of the electric eye (for the most part), move to a small town
America is big. Really big. And there are plenty of under-10,000 population towns to go around in every state.
You can be rest assured that surveillance tech, even at its cheapest, will have little to no presence in small towns simply because nobody wants to pay for it. Not the feds, not the state, not the town and certainly not you. Everyone would be much happier investing in things that actually matter, like better roads, better schools and so on. Surveillance tech is really, really low on the priority list for small towns.
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