Watching Out

This column originally appeared on Sunday, May 31, 2009

You are being watched.

Ahem. Perhaps “watched” is not quite the correct word, since it means that a person is looking at you, observing you, studying your moves. Let me say instead that you are being captured by a camera’s eye, recorded on video, your image filed away for future reference, whether you know it or not.

It’s not entirely a Big Brother sort of thing, the surveillance of average people by the government as envisioned by George Orwell in “1984,” the telescreens there in every apartment waiting to catch the citizens of Oceana acting without the interests of their all-knowing leader at heart. No, we Winston Smiths are in this case watched primarily by business interests, rather than political bureaucracies. And entertainment colossusses.

The thought of this ubiquitous video presence occurred to me some time ago, when I wrote of the case of several young men who were arrested and charged with a home invasion robbery at one of the apartment complexes in West Chester. Police were able to make a compelling case against the men in part by the use of videotapes taken from security cameras at both the apartment building where the robbery took place and a local Wawa, where the co-conspirators -- as we enjoy calling folks who decide that committing a crime is the best way to solidify a budding relationship -- gathered before and afterwards.

The men knew there were security cameras in the apartment hallway, and tried to disable them. But they did not realize that they were also being filmed as they stood outside the Wawa, their disguises in the apartment having discarded. Police were able to watch the Wawa video and match each man up to the images of the hooded and masked men who came to ransack and rob.

So, too, I believe, was the Buck County woman who faked her own kidnapping last week unaware that she would be spotted by a security video walking through the Philadelphia International Airport on her way to a luxury vacation at Disney -- a vacation albeit shorted somewhat by the delivery of an arrest warrant for false reports by the FBI. She apparently was not aware of the scope of the modern Big Brother’s presence.

And neither would I be. When I shop, I don’t consider that my movements, and inadvertent impulse purchases, are being filmed for general viewing purposes. When I walk down the street, I don’t imagine that a camera is going to catch me secretly scratching my nose. Or worse.

But I am perhaps among a select group who do not desire their lives to be filmed and broadcast, even though it may show those lives disintegrating into cheesy drama. I am referring of course, to the news that the Berks County couple who have become known far and wide as simply “Jon & Kate,” are now having marital and, possibly, legal problems.

According to the Associated Press, Jon, Kate and their eight children have attracted a huge TV audience, screaming tabloid headlines and, now, a state labor investigation.The Pennsylvania Department of Labor says it's looking into whether the hit reality show "Jon & Kate Plus 8" is complying with child labor laws.

The show drew nearly 10 million viewers for its fifth-season premiere Monday following reports of trouble in the Gosselins' marriage. Labor Department spokesman Justin Fleming tells The Associated Press that the department is looking into a complaint against the show. So now the poster family of fertility has the potential to find itself a symbol of child exploitation.

People must realize that the presence of cameras has unintended consequences, and rather than define reality, alters it. Recall the example of the All American Loud family in the early 1970s, whose idyllic family life ended in surprising divorce as the Public Broadcasting System cameras rolled. The impact of an ever present lens is why courtrooms in Pennsylvania don’t allow cameras, and why I am certain that the Chester County commissioners’ meetings are soon going to start featuring some classic “American Idol”-type moments, now that the meetings are being videoed. People, any good newspaperman will tell you, turn into different characters when the camera starts rolling

Perhaps the best consequence of this video presence is that eventually those potential criminals will realize that their every movement is on tape, and they’ll simply burst into a version of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miz, ala British reality-show chanteuse Susan Boyle, instead of carrying through on that carjacking.

I’d watch.