Barbara Julian

Can the rise of surveillance in our culture and city coexist with an authentic right to privacy? WE ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE EVERYWHERE: malls, offices, hospitals, buses, airports and streets. Ubiquitous CCTV cameras break down barriers between private and public life and erode not only privacy but independent thinking. Surveillance is a herding technique which builds group-think, as psychologist Bruno Bettelheim discovered in Nazi prisons. To spend a day unseen is becoming a luxury rather than a choice. How did we let a fundamental freedom like privacy slide away?