... because there's always a lot of people who are way smarter than me here who come and make very insightful comments but this time I have to say ... ... so farking what ?

Please return to your normal schedules.

Thank you.

Tessa

This could have very easily happened without people looking at the monitors. You could have been spotted doing the deed by someone standing on the street. You run that risk any time you break into your car. So what's the difference here ?

What better incentive : money ! People won't be motivated by hate, ideological bias, morals, etc, etc but by simple money. It's not personal and keeps in line with the desire for people to be free from societal shackles. But now, you only have to answer to society for crimes you're actually caught commiting.

It would however only work *IF* the correct safeguards were present. Knowing how incompetent government services are in any country, I'm really not hopeful.

What's the right balance between social cohesion and personal freedoms where society can continue to exist whilst each individual is able to enjoy the freedoms they're entitled to ?

What people have forgotten to consider is : can a completely anonymous society continue to exist as a society ?

Social cohesion has always depended on a degree of control of the individual by the group. That, naturally, caused a lot of pain to anyone who stepped out of line. When people started to migrate to cities, their privacy increased. Hell, to this day gays will move to the city in order to escape the intolerance felt back in the small town they come from.

While privacy increases, social cohesion decreases and unsurprisingly this gets abused by criminals etc who benefit from the increased anonymity.

Now with the ability of the common citizen to view the cameras, we're seeing the return of the control of the individual by the group.

I'd like to argue that this could in fact be a GOOD THING. People won't be watching out for if you're gay or foreign or an unmarried couple but will be watching out to see if they can catch you red-handed committing crimes. In a way, the fact they don't know you but are watching out for the crime removes the prejudiced attitudes and only leaves the question of : is this guy in the picture breaking into that car or not ?

This could actually be the solution to a major social problem.

Turkey badly needs to get into the EU. They won't do anything aggressive to Kurdistan unless they want to spoil any chance of getting into the EU.

This is admittedly a slight gamble : it's also possible that the Turks will finally give up trying to get into the EU and will go along with a revived Islamic wave coming from Iran. And then we'll have a huge muslim threat right on our (EU) doorstep.

Oh well, we're all doomed anyway.