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The American Airforce has instigated a program called Eagle Eyes - just take a look at the first paragraph at this site:

http://public.afosi.amc.af.mil/eagle/suspicious_behavior.asp

It’s a worry

Uggh... sounds like a Big Brother issue...

This part disturbs me and reminds me of movies with lots of paranoia in them...

Suspicious persons out of place: People who don’t seem to belong in the workplace, neighborhood, business establishment, or anywhere else. Includes suspicious border crossings and stowaways aboard ship or people jumping ship in port. This category is hard to define, but the point is that people know what looks right and what doesn't look right in their neighborhoods, office spaces, commutes, etc, and if a person just doesn't seem like he or she belongs, there's probably a reason for that.

Okay... so who gets to determine who is "out of place"...

Chris

Organised and officially sanctioned paranoia. If people can be made to fear each other it makes it easy for governments to get them to accept curtailing of their civil liberties to "preserve their freedom". This is pretty much how the modern police state works (think Iraq before GW started his crursade).

Think George Orwell. Thin 1984....

We are, again, realising what happened in Germany in the 30’s. A person within a block of houses was allocated to be the super snitch on the neighbours - anything that was not normal was reported to the Geheime Staats Polizei (Gestapo). This also happened within the Hitler Youth where children were made to spy on their own parents.

The obvious problem with this behaviour is that if I don’t personally like a person then I can make their life hell by reporting something that just ain’t true.

In some ways, because of terrorism, we are reentering the dark ages within lawful society

Sounds a lot like the way Miller present McCarthyism in The Crucible... maybe we have to start re-introducing Orwell and Miller back on school reading lists... or maybe even Congressional reading lists in the US...

I'm not so sure this is anything new or particularly american...

I did some work for the ADO (Australian Defence Organisation - the civil service branch of Defence) which involved trips to various military and non-military sites. I was at an ADO building in Canberra which had open access from a public road. This was a secure building which required that I be escorted everywhere I went (including the toilet) but there were no fences or guard houses around the building, only a security post at the entrance. As I was standing outside waiting for colleagues on a cold Canberra Sunday morning I saw a potential shot of the fog in the bush across the road. As I got my camera out the guard came rushing out and told me to put it in the car or he would confiscate it.

It turns out that there are laws against taking photographs, making drawings, maps or plans detailing the inside or outside of any defence property. So you can drive by and look at the place but taking photos of the bush across the road is not allowed.

Irony is that I had taken the camera into the building (in a bag) without question over the previous two days. Also, almost everyone has a mobile phone with camera which is never questioned.