In Praise of Barbarians by Mike Davis

Author:Mike Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2010-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

(May 2005, Socialist Review)

“Are we all destined to be Minutemen?” a California journalist recently asked. He had just visited www.texasborderwatch.com, the website sponsored by Texas Governor Rick Perry that invites Internet users to monitor the webcams that stream live views of that state’s border with Mexico. If one of Perry’s virtual vigilantes spies a suspicious person or activity, she can simply click a button to notify Texas police or the Border Patrol. According to the governor’s press office, “Texas will use $5 million to begin placing hundreds of surveillance cameras along criminal hot spots and common routes used to enter this country. Perry said the cameras will cover vast stretches of farm and ranchland located directly on the border where criminal activity is known to occur.” The site is extraordinarily popular and in the first week of operation had 2.1 million hits. Thus no need to sit in a lawn chair in the hot sun with a shotgun on your lap, when you help patrol the border from your bedroom, office, or swimming pool. Indeed the mind boggles at the future applications of this idea: a participatory-democratic version of Orwell’s nightmare with one part of the public enthusiastically recruited to spy on immigrants, prisoners, kids, or simply their neighbors. SDS meets 1984. Turn over Jeremy Bentham.

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