"I'm watching you, Wazowski. Always watching."
That's the famous growl given by Roz, peering down over her glasses, at the one-eyed green ball Wazowski in the movie Monsters Inc.
Wazowski flees from the nasty Roz, but there's no escape for the rest of us. We're all under constant surveillance, both in the physical world but also online. The government, public law enforcement, businesses and private security are all watching us with their eyes, their cameras and their computers. Of course, we're also all watching each other, through social media.
It sounds like paranoia but it's reality.
There are cameras at numerous points on all B.C. highways to monitor conditions, for example, but thOse cameras can also be used to track the movement of your vehicle.
Police cars now boast a scanning device that automatically reads the licence plates of the vehicles around them. A warning pops up on a computer screen to inform the officer behind the wheel when there's a problem with a nearby vehicle, with infractions ranging from the vehicle being reported stolen to the owner not having paid the insurance on time.
We're not just being watched on roads but in shopping malls, stores and businesses.
Furthermore, our online activity and our cell phone use betrays where we are, what we're doing, who we're talking to and what we're talking and even thinking about.
Surveillance is back in the news after the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were so quickly identified, thanks not only to photographs and video provided by spectators but also images obtained from the cameras in stores and businesses around the site of the two blasts.
It's all to easy to believe that greater surveillance will keep us safer, both as individuals but in our communities. Bad guys don't like to be seen so if the light always shines, the logic goes, they'll be seen and caught before they can do great harm.
That logic was used by the federal Conservatives last year to propose Bill C-30, the Protecting Children From Internet Predators Act. When a Liberal MP dared to speak against the proposed law, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews fired back with "he can either stand with us or stand with the child pornographers."
Never mind that the bill would have forced Internet service providers to track the activity of all of their customers and then law enforcement officers at all levels, even Competition Bureau staff, could seize that information without a warrant.
Fortunately, the Conservatives let Bill C-30 die a well-deserved death.
The problem with surveillance in all of its forms is its limited value to prevent bad things from happening.
After tragedy happens, we can't help but desperately look for ways to discourage and stop criminals before they commit their crimes. Politicians and surveillance equipment businesses rush in, seizing the opportunity to win votes and increase sales.
Sadly, surveillance works best at providing evidence after the fact. Carrying a backpack in public isn't a crime. Even if a camera could see a pressure cooker inside the backpack, that's not a crime, either. Turning a pressure cooker on isn't a crime but turning one on in public when it contains explosive material is but all a camera would see is someone plugging in a pressure cooker. The video would only have meaning looking backwards.
Online surveillance won't be much better. The Conservatives can scrape together as many cyberbullying bills as they like but they will probably be too late to save the next Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons.
The machines can track movement, monitor data and watch as much as we like but it still takes a human mind to understand what's being seen, what the pieces mean when put together and then tell someone with the authority to take preventative action.
The problem is we usually don't know where to look and what to look for until it's too late. By then, the pieces are usually being assembled by investigators after the tragedy has occurred, when the outcome seems obvious through the perfect vision of hindsight.
Not even Roz could watch Wazowski that well.
