Not afraid of Orwell

The No-Contact Apprehension Policy, or NCAP, remains in limbo after the Supreme Court issued last year a temporary restraining order against its implementation on complaints that it violated the public's right to due process and the right to privacy.

Before the legality of the NCAP was put before the SC, motorists complained that the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority and various local government units in the capital region abused the system to wantonly slap motorists with traffic violation tickets.

As the case is pending and is sub judice, we'll let the protagonists slug it out in the legal arena, hoping that our learned magistrates of the SC will render a fair decision that will also be in lockstep with our technologically changing world.

In the meantime, the MMDA and Metro Manila LGUs have announced a plan to integrate all closed-circuit television systems in the metropolis so they could cobble together an interoperable platform that, hopefully, would be useful in police investigations and the solution of crimes.

There have been many crimes where the perpetrators were identified with the help of CCTV cameras, especially those committed in public places, where their escape routes were traced.

Backtracking by cops has proven to be an effective tool when criminals, thinking they had gotten far away from the scene of their dastardly deed, lowered their guard, and removed their helmets, caps, and masks.

The MMDA and LGUs, pending the resolution of the NCAP legal tussle, naturally have to find some use for their CCTV systems. Interconnecting and making them accessible through one system would certainly come in handy when metro-wide police actions that are in synch are needed, like when intercepting fleeing criminals at checkpoints.

Some would be inclined to clap back that CCTVs feed off an Orwellian scenario of governments becoming omniscient and manipulative of people's lives, throwing away individual freedoms.

George Orwell's novel "1984," it has to be pointed out, was written in the aftermath of World War 2 against the fear of another Nazi Germany rising. The Cold War, with the Soviet Union at the center of the paranoia, would make "1984" a powerful, disturbing, and nearly prophetic work of fiction.

It remains relevant today, more so with the ever-more powerful tools that those engaged in thought policing and the surveillance of people have at their disposal. The potential for abuse of technology is way greater today with the internet, and with people's information digitized, so safeguards must be put in place.

With AI-powered IoTs or the Internet of Things, as the latest CCTVs imbued with facial recognition technology, Orwellian concerns are again manifesting as more nations ramp up their surveillance and monitoring activities.

China has 200 million CCTV cameras installed for a variety of purposes, including public safety, crime prevention, and societal control, as we saw during the pandemic when Beijing strong-armed its people into isolating themselves.

So-called mature democracies also use CCTVs: The United States, with 50 million in place; Germany, with 5.2 million; and the United Kingdom and Japan, each with five million. Also having extensive CCTV systems are Vietnam, France, South Korea, the Netherlands and Australia.

True enough, CCTV cameras can track people's whereabouts, monitor their behavior, and even build profiles of their interests and associations. This level of surveillance, it could be argued, may be a violation of privacy.

Likewise, the fear of being monitored in public can have a chilling effect on free speech, with people less likely to engage in protest activities if they know they are being watched.

Not in the Philippines, though, generally speaking, where the state has yet to reach a level of sophistication to be pictured as Big Brother watching.

Here in our country, there are too few CCTVs installed, and fewer people still monitor them.

Likewise, Filipinos have little fear of the camera. On the contrary, most protesters we see have perfected the art of the circus to better send their messages across — from the lens to the ubiquitous smartphone monitors.