‘HURTT PRIZE’: Site offers cash for video of chief breaking law
If you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?
- Harold Hurtt
In the local version of Our Glorious Leader’s never-ending War Against Terrorism, you can count on Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt to leave no stone unturned. Nope, if Hurtt has his way, no terrorist will be able to operate in Spaced City, because the city will be blanketed with surveillance cameras. In the end, though, won’t this really just have the effect of forcing terror into the suburbs? Can Sugar Land or Bellaire ever feel safe knowing that Houston will soon be a terror-free zone?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that Chief Hurtt’s heart is in the right place. I’m just not at all certain that his head is. While he can be forgiven for wanting to be able to use every tool at his disposal to it’s fullest, do we really want to be a society in which our every public move is recorded by someone and evaluated for illegal behavior? Do we really want Big Brother watching us as the price of increased security, or, if we were to be honest with ourselves, the perception of increased security?
Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt’s proposal to use surveillance cameras to deter crime has prompted an Oregon Web site designer to offer a cash prize to anyone who comes up with video evidence of Hurtt committing a crime.
The chief’s proposal also has triggered a minor buzz among bloggers, much of it in response to a comment featured prominently in news accounts.
“If you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?” Hurtt asked in announcing the proposal during a Feb. 15 meeting with reporters.
At face value, Hurtt has a point. Really, though, do we really want Big Brother watching our every move, even IF we’re not doing anything “wrong”? In our post-9.11 world, is this really to be the price of the perception of increased security?
When Matt Asher, a 32-year-old Medford, Ore., Web site designer, read a wire service report on Hurtt’s comments in a local newspaper, he was moved to create the “Hurtt Prize” for “the first person who can provide definitive videotaped evidence of Houston police chief Harold Hurtt committing a crime, any crime.”
The reward stands at more than $1,400 — $1,000 from Asher and the balance pledged by readers of his Web site, www.hurttprize.org.
This is not a trivial question. How much of our privacy are we willing to surrender in order to be safe and secure- or at least feel that way? Yes, there are certainly advantages to ever-present security cameras. The London train bombers, for instance, were quickly identified from security camera footage. We could have the same sort of advantage here…but at the cost of having our every move captured for posterity.
Is this really what we want?
Asher said he created the site because he is concerned about Hurtt’s suggested use of security cameras “even in places that were previously considered off limits.” He said he was particularly irritated by Hurtt’s comment that people who aren’t committing crimes needn’t worry about surveillance.
“Privacy isn’t some trivial side effect of a free society,” Asher said by e-mail. “It is the very heart of the issue.”
Similar comments have surfaced on blogs based in Houston and elsewhere….
Austin blogger Scott Henson responded sharply to Hurtt’s “why should you worry about it?” comment.
“Uh, because you respect the Constitution and personal liberty, maybe? The KGB used that same line in Communist Russia, one recalls, on their way to filling up a system of gulags.”
Yes, I do understand that post-9.11 America is a much different place. We have seen both the threat and the reality of terrorism writ large on our Homeland. No, we cannot continue to live as we did before…but does that mean we must allow government to assume the role of Big Brother, watching our every public move in the name of protecting us from terrorism? Is this the kind of society we want to be?
The problem with giving up civil liberties is that it can quickly become a slippery slope. What is lost can and likely will be far more to difficult to regain. Not that Harold Hurtt understands this. After all, if you’re not doing anything wrong, why shouldn’t Big Brother be watching? What are you afraid of?
Me? I’m afraid of Chief DUMB@$$ Hurtt, who seems to have lost sight of the fact that “police state” is not a phrase Americans generally aspire to have attached to their homeland.
WE ARE AT WAR WITH EURASIA. WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURASIA….
