Let’s explore merits of mass surveillance

THE EDITOR: As we approach Christmas, many of us make it our duty to take to the streets and the shopping malls to find gifts for our friends and loved ones. We battle through crowds hurriedly buying whatever we couldn’t order on the internet.

While it may be the season of goodwill for many, it’s an opportunity for the lowliest of society to take advantage of the busy crowds.

Christmas is no longer a joyous time in TT as we have to be constantly on the lookout for criminals looking to steal our hard-earned belongings. When we go to the malls we have to worry about where we park just in case some bandit smashes the vehicle’s windscreen in an attempt to steal whatever valuables might be in it.

We need to invest more heavily in the area of surveillance so that law-abiding citizens can feel safe knowing someone is watching out for us. The Government and large corporations must make it their top priority to install cameras, microphones and other tracking devices all across the country and to develop the capacity to store and process oceans of surveillance data in real time.

We should start preparing the nation and not just by wringing our hands or mounting attempts to defeat surveillance. We ought to do some hard thinking about its positive aspects. Cataloguing the downsides of mass surveillance is essential, but we have literature devoted to that. Instead, let’s explore its potential benefits.

SIMON WRIGHT, Chaguanas