People have always pushed back against the idea of 'Big Brother' watching which generally is thought of as the 'State' watching what we do and generally I agree with many of the issues with this as my personal freedom is important to me.
People in the west will quote the situation in non western countries where the wests view is that these states control and monitor their people closely.
This may be true but is it always bad? Clearly if the state is misleading people or intimidating people or at its worse forcing people into conforming to what it wants them to do then that is bad.
As an example we see oppressive controls on women and free speech in some countries and we must continue to condemn these restrictions.
However is it possible to use technology to ensure that we are all safe, whether in our homes, out in the street or driving our cars?
In the UK our Police Force has been under resourced for many years now and so they tend to ignore petty crime such as bicycle theft or burglary as they leave it to the insurance companies to repay the victims. It is not the Police's fault its just they don't have the resources funded by the government.
But these crimes are important to people and particularly the elderly and people living on their own who will be very scared if other houses have been broken into close by.
Technology could prevent a lot of these crimes, street cams on every street in the UK with a central control room and use of AI video recognition software to spot suspicious behavior would help make neighbourhoods safe. These cams are already on our high street, at work, in cars, doorbells and even on cycle helmets so they are part of our daily lives.
My point here is that this it is not about personal freedom its about protecting people in our society. We are currently going through a spate of car break ins in our area and due to the vast number of 'ring doorbells' in the area we have captured several videos of the criminal involved, if similar cams were under a central control then the police could most likely have caught the offender.
I believe that technology can fill the gap in protecting people where the Police no longer can for petty crime and that the argument for human rights which definitely always needs to be considered and addressed could be satisfied if we wanted to.