Assignment 5

This week’s assignment is about democracy and freedom. How democratic is a country, if you’re increasing the people’s freedom with cameras and other controlling things. If you are always being watched and controlled, can you then call yourself free? The question that Marika want us to write about is:

What is good and bad about restricting the freedom of a democratic country in order to preserve democracy itself?

On one hand cameras can be good if you want to protect something, like at the school that I work. At evenings and weekends there are plenty of teenagers that are staying outside, on the playground. And it has happened, several times, that windows and other things have been broken. Maybe a camera would protect the schools property. Maybe the youngsters would let things be, and think twice before they broke something?

It would be easier to discover terrorists if we had cameras that controls the surroundings. If I remember correctly a terrorist attack were stopped because of cameras that caught the terrorists’ preparations. So you can say: thanks to the cameras a lot of peoples’ lives were saved that time.

Another positive thing with cameras would be to protect citizens late at night. It has been more dangerous to walk alone, in or outside the city at nighttime. I don’t know if it actually has been more dangerous. I don’t know if it’s because of my age that I feel more scared, and think that it’s rather frightening to walk by myself at night. It happens a lot of scary things anyway, and maybe there wouldn’t be as much if there were cameras in every corner, watching over you?

On the other hand cameras could make you feel a bit paranoid, I think. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I knew that I’m being watched all the time.

What is the next step? Maybe you have to leave a picture of yourself and maybe even a film sequence where you can see how your body moves (if the cameras show a man/woman from a long distance). What’s the point having a camera if you can’t recognize the people that they are showing? Then we have come to a society that really has increased the freedom and democracy. It has become a little bit less democratic, I believe.

We have to be able to rely on each other and the society has to rely on people. I think it is difficult to do so if the society has decided that everyone of us is a potential terrorist, rapist or murderer. Maybe we get more scared and look over our shoulders more often because of this. Instead of making us feel secure, the cameras make us feel more frightened.

To preserve democracy we have to have a control system. We have to have different sorts of organizations that protect us and the democracy itself. But I think it is important to really think twice before you letting new things in.