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# Writer needs to get it right
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/writer-needs-to-get-it-right-editor/
- Published: 2007-10-15T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T03:27:16.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Neil Macaulay Santa Monica*

Miriam Jaffe writes on Oct. 4 that cameras at intersections with a high rate of crashes are an “enormous threat to our liberty.” I completely disagree. I welcome such cameras and the consequent saving of lives. Perhaps even Ms Jaffe’s!

She says that “in London public cameras have proliferated out of control.” This is demonstrably false. Cameras are not capable of self reproduction so I can put Ms Jaffe’s mind at rest on that score. The cameras are not “out of control.” How could they be? They are inanimate objects. Every single camera is 100 percent controlled by software and the system as a whole is controlled by highly qualified intelligent people and they in turn are controlled by the voters of a highly intelligent democracy.

The people of London have been bombed throughout the 20th century by the IRA, the Luftwaffe and religious extremists.

They take the view, as any intelligent non-suicidal person will, that being blown up is a more severe curtailment of their liberty than being photographed.

She claims that cameras are “spying on citizens.” They are not spying. There is no secrecy. They are completely visible and in public places only. They record the public acts of anyone in their range. This generates huge amounts of images of a huge number of people. Most of it will never be looked at. Why would it? It is extremely boring and it would be massively time consuming to do so. It is only when a crime is committed that the images will be looked at by a human being.

Precisely which specific liberty does she consider she will lose? She does not say and I suspect she does not know. If she is a law abiding citizen she has nothing to fear. Is there some activity which she indulges in, in public, and doesn’t want anyone to know about? Even without cameras, all her public acts are visible to whoever may be around. The public parts of most people’s lives are largely routine, boring and of little interest to anyone.

Ms. Jaffe asks, “Why not cameras along all the streets to catch jaywalkers?” I support her here within reason. Let’s have cameras on any street on which crime is a problem. Especially on Pico Boulevard where people are shot in broad daylight. Then the police can rapidly see what happened and who did it and prosecute them expediently and avoid huge expensive trials with questionable witnesses. If Ms. Jaffe reads the Crime Watch column (in the DP) she will see that most of the crimes reported there are committed by “transients” (who unfortunately are not transient but resident). So we have criminals sleeping in the streets of Santa Monica.

Ms. Jaffe suggest we accept an occasional accident as an unfortunate part of life. What nonsense! Driving through a red light and killing someone is not “accidental.” It is a conscious decision freely made by a borderline suicidal/homicidal person. Ms. Jaffe would rather be killed at an intersection than photographed at one. Again why? What is she doing at intersections which she wants no-one to see? Absolutely nothing. Sitting in her car looking very bored waiting for the light to change.

We live in an age of religious fanaticism and of constant crime. Most crimes are committed repeatedly by the same tiny minority of society. Bombers can choose to bomb Santa Monica just as they have London. The most recent London bombers were caught in 24 hours at minimal cost. They were tried expeditiously and found guilty. If Santa Monica were bombed we’d probably never find the bombers and so then we’d have to install cameras but then they’d have been paid for in blood. I’d rather pay for my freedom in dollars than in blood. The price of freedom is eternal intelligence.

I think there is something strange about people, in an English speaking democracy, fearing their own democratically elected government.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 15, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/101507.pdf?ref=smdp.com)