Watching the watchers can be dangerous business. The video above is from an amateur cameraman who was assaulted by police because he was videotaping a search the police were conducting on a neighbor’s property and didn’t drop the camera after the police instructed him to do so. And why did they ask him to drop it? According to police, the camera could have been used as a weapon against them.

Not surprisingly, the cameraman was acquitted on all disorderly conduct charges, and he has a pending lawsuit against the police department.

Apparently the police of this particular department in Oregon have decided that they don’t like being watched. But who does? Unfortunately being watched is something that is starting to become commonplace. According to author Wilton D. Alston, writing in the latest cover story for The New American magazine, entitled "Living Under Surveillance", "the UK is now the world’s most watched country, having upwards of five million closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras keeping a watchful eye on the public, with the average citizen being caught on camera around 300 times per day." Yet crime, including violent crime, has continued to rise. And while surveillance in the U.S. is not yet as invasive as in Britain, police departments are nevertheless eager to install more spy cameras.

Americans under surveillance by their own governments? That seems like something out of a George Orwell book. Oh, wait…it is! More and more, it seems, surveillance technology is here to stay, but how do we prevent it from controlling us? First, according to Alston, citizens can’t let government have a monopoly on surveillance power. We’ve already seen the dangers that occur when government begins to accrue more power than it should. In the federal government, Congress has rolled over to every demand made by the executive branch, in many cases allowing itself to become little more than a rubber stamp for presidential ambitions. As a result, today’s administration has tap-danced all over the Constitution and citizen privacy all in the name of terrorism and wrapped it up in a patriotic security blanket called the Patriot Act. As Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."

To that point, surveillance cameras do not lead to increased security. Cameras are mechanical devices that can only record events as they happen. Until the day that the cameras are able to wield a club or a gun and actually stop crime in progress, they will not deter or stop crime. In this sense, security cameras are much like the police who come to a crime scene to investigate and clean up. Do not confuse that with protection. Being armed and trained in self defense is protection. In the end, surveillance cameras provide only a false sense of security. And they do that at a substantial cost to privacy and liberty.

But, don’t despair that Big Brother has become all-powerful. Citizens can still pay attention to what is happening around them and react appropriately by contacting their Senators and Representatives to demand adherence to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As Mr. Alston concludes in his article, let’s keep watching the watchers. For "if we fail to do so, all the checks and balances built into the system — from the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures to habeas corpus — will ultimately be totally lost along with freedom."