Napolitano wants to be Your Big Brother… err, Big Sister
In the Gov’s State of the State address, there were many fantastical ideas thrown about. Most will never see the light of day because they are just that, a fantasy. Some of them we are happy to know will remain in the 9th floor chuckles archive titled “Can you believe they fall for this stuff?” But, at least one of her ideas mentioned has already quietly taken flight through the previously appropriated budget for her Department of Public Safety (DPS). It is the license plate recognition program. The Gov pitched it as a way she plans to crack down on car thieves and catch criminals on our roads. What she didn’t mention is the enormous sacrifice law-abiding citizens will make of their privacy and that the State of Arizona has effectively become your Big Brother.
I caught wind of this during a meeting with DPS regarding a completely different issue over the interim. The agency representative was apparently excited by the idea that they would be taking a picture of every passing vehicle at various locations around the state and keeping that data for future review. I suggested immediately that they may have trouble with this program, seeing as how many of us down at the legislature still believe in the American citizen’s constitutionally-protected right to privacy…
Fast forward to post-election and the introduction of the “One Arizona” by the Gov. and this frightening idea is now moved beyond a little pilot project by an agency without oversight. Now this “government is watching you” program has been jettisoned into the heady atmosphere of the Governor’s priority programs, specifically mentioned in her State of the State address.
This is why I recently introduced a bill that would prohibit your state and local governments from recording and then storing information on the whereabouts of law-abiding citizens (which in America, you are all presumed to be, least ‘til proven otherwise). My bill allows law enforcement agencies to view passing vehicles via their cameras, as I understand they need to find criminals. But they cannot store the image or the data collected there beyond 24 hours if they do not have information showing it is a stolen vehicle or was used in a crime.
I realize it sounds easier to find criminals by requiring each of us to report our whereabouts hourly, give a drop of blood for DNA testing to the government, have cameras with facial recognition software installed throughout the state in public and private locations, submit identifying information every time you complete a financial transaction, etc. But at what cost? How “free” would you really be, even as a law-abiding citizen? If in trying to track down the miniscule percentage of people that make trouble, all people must live under the constant scrutiny of “Big Brother” government and her ongoing political agenda, we have given up far too much.
Our freedom is the core of what makes us Americans, after all.
