Video Surveillance, Human Rights to Privacy and Productivity

Video Surveillance, Human Rights to Privacy and Productivity

Let me deal with a point Linux Guru, Jon Hall has to say about Technology and Automation, first.

He is a believer that technology pushes human progress fast forward;

Automation and computers included.

I believe in his mode of thinking but with a difference.

If we are to travel in space to an alien planet, current mode of rocket science is inadequate and will get us nowhere.

Similarly, we have to drop that “God Created Us” and the “Intelligent Design” forthright.

We have to design a NEW FORM of transport technology that Warps “Time and Space”, if we are to investigate and expand our horizon in space.

To get there next generation has to be educated in STEM (Jon Hall’s coining).

S for Science (rather new science in my thinking that includes dark force and dark matter).

T for Technology

E for Engineering and more importantly

M for Mathematical Model and Calculation (computer assisted, ideally string theory of many dimensions is my choice).

All this is within Human Grasp in the next 100 years.

Now let me come to the "Video Ordeal" every one of us goes through in our daily life (buying the daily food provisions from the food store is not spared).

You are under 24 hour video surveillance buying bread and butter.

That annoys me a lot.

That makes me to hesitate poking my finger through a loaf of bread to see if it is soft (for an edantulant guy of my age) or crispy and crunchy for a kid under video surveillance.

Without this first hand human testing you have to buy whatever rotten stuff is left in the shelf.

If I am in service I will use video surveillance productively but randomly to check;

1. Survey “bottle necks” in service outlets.

2. Survey improvement in a “chain of production line’

3. Survey who is adopting (prevent) shortcuts in a “5S Facility".

Barring those few business like approaches, I hate I am being watched and in video, in every “Activity of Daily Living’, in a supermarket.

I feel that we are treated like monkeys in business suit.

I also consider, it as a violation of basic human right (to be able to keep the dignity of private life as private life-what I eat, how I pee or void my excesses).

I know even my dog does not like for me (Except when he eats. He wants one of us to be near his food plate) to be around when he is attending to his daily voiding.

Imagine we keep video surveillance 24 hours at home and your spouse watches it daily.

It is simply a major psychiatric disease called paranoia which there is no treatment.

I think our business world has gone totally bonkers with video surveillance.

Few observations.

Few years ago, I detected a Manager (I did three days of detective work) of a Commercial Bank using his video camera to watch and prey young girls withdrawing money from a particular till.

On the third day I went into his room and told my observations in detail to his annoyance and I told him I never will come to his bank.

Just today, I went to a business place where I meet an old friend of mine (clever accountant) and have a little chat.

Moment I entered the place, I felt bit unfamiliar and uneasy.

I could not point my finger to the problem and I asked for the chair to sit in front of his desk. 

I do not like looking down on people when I talk to.

The chair was missing which in business sense was a major lapse.

He got up and proceeded towards the entrance and while moving on told me that they have installed video cameras and the friendly chat is being watched by the minute not only by the owner but his wife at home on weekends.

The owner who started small and was dealing with smuggled electrical items in potato containers, a decade ago ( I used to give him few friendly advices, smuggling is not the way forward) has gone paranoid.

What a turn around?

I wish everybody knows his beginning.

I now make it a point to avoid these institutes but once in a way throw temper tantrums (to make the salesperson angry) well thought and programed in my brain to see the response.

The response is muted, the reason being the video surveillance.

That is why, I believe, the video surveillance brings the productivity down to almost zero.

Just this week I went to pay the electricity bill and the cashier threw the balance back at me like a devil.

Funnily enough (usually I give an angry eye contact but no verbal exchanges) he did not make me angry and I felt pity for the psychopath behind the counter.

In that sense most of the government servants including bank officers are now psychopaths.

I told my son why don’t you make me angry for a change that I am getting very passive for an unusually long period of time.

He laughing said “No Way”.

The secret of my anger management is my Blind Dog.

He is an anger manager par excellence!

Never gets cross with any family member (even the food is late).