My brother Michael called me early on the morning of 9/11 with three messages: Turn on the television now; oh my god this is happening; and brace yourself for a war, violent racial profiling, and the disintegration of Constitutional standards for searches and trials. Here we are 12 years later, and his predictions were dead right: Afghanistan, Iraq, a spike in mortal hate crimes, the Patriot Act. I don't think those changes made our nation altogether safer, honestly. In many ways, they make this place more dangerous for lots of law-abiding people. But I don't disagree with everything we did, either. The US military should try to dismantle Al Qaeda. But all in all, I'm skeptical of our government's knee-jerk security.

It's as if the US had an allergic reaction to terrorism almost as bad, or in some cases worse, than the antigen that triggered it—a sort of anaphylaxis that suffocated civil liberties and rational discussion.

But ever since last Monday, since the Boston bombings, I've been doing something I don't usually do: hoping that cameras were videotaping every action along Boylston Street, along the entire marathon route, and, hell, every street in that city. I hoped that ocean of footage would be combed by law enforcement, who could crosscheck it with massive databases—databases that contain god knows what—that include every clue about the suspects' identities and every record the federal and local governments had on file, from cell phone calls to light bills.

I went to bed thinking about how, possibly, the FBI could sift through the files to catch those motherfuckers. But that's not normally how I want federal law enforcers to behave. And if I could feel that way—a civil-liberty crusading liberal who harbors a fairly deep distrust of federal law enforcement, particularly when it involves tracking the movements of innocent civilian in public—hundreds of millions of other people probably did, too.

That line of thinking has since spurred an outcry for politicians to engage in more video surveillance. Even though some US cities already have cameras, many of them private, the apparent usefulness of the video in Boston is compelling folks to say we need more of them to fight terrorism and even day-to-day crime.

"I do think we need more cameras," GOP Representative Peter King of New York said on Tuesday, responding to the bombings. He called cameras "a great law enforcement method and device" that "keeps us ahead of the terrorists, who are constantly trying to kill us."

"We Need More Cameras, and We Need Them Now," said a headline across Slate on Thursday. "Cities under the threat of terrorist attack should install networks of cameras to monitor everything that happens at vulnerable urban installations," says the piece by Farhad Manjoo, who also points out that "we should think about how cameras could help prevent crimes, not just solve them once they’ve already happened."

That's a romantic proposal: Affix these gadgets to every cornice in America and prevent crimes from happening in the first place.

President Obama's speech Thursday concluded with what almost sounded like a dare to terrorists and a challenge to America, a challenge to gird ourselves sufficiently to prevent another attack: "This time next year on the third Monday in April, the world will return to this great American city to run harder than ever and to cheer even louder for the 118th Boston Marathon," Obama thundered. He promised that America would be back along that 26.2-mile route—and I'm certain that we will. I'm also certain that every inch of it will go recorded. And don't plan on taking your backpack. But like Manjoo says, it's not just Boston that must arm itself with digital eyeballs. It's every city vulnerable to attack, which, of course, is every city.

Like Chicago.

“I will say, as I always have, because we have continued to put cameras throughout the city for security… purposes, they serve an important function for the city in providing the type of safety on a day-to-day basis—not just for big events like a marathon, but day-to-day purposes,” said Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday.

Cameras are relatively inexpensive, storing data gets easier and easier, and law enforcement has never met a camera it didn't like. England has four million cameras and London has an estimated half-million cameras. By comparison, US cities have very few. In response to 9/11, about 3,000 surveillance cameras were installed in Lower Manhattan for the "Ring of Steel." And it showed that after 9/11, America's traditional resistance to casual surveillance—a resistance to being videotaped because our culture defends privacy, believes in anonymity, and champions free association—got blown up by the terrorists, too.

"I think the public, because of how spectacular these kinds of events are in terms of the imagery, they have the capacity to really incite a lot of fear," says Adam Molnar, a PhD candidate who is conducting research on security for major sporting events at the University of Victoria, in a phone call. "Typically, there is a public response to try to throw everything we can at a problem like this so it doesn't happen again. After an event like this, you often see a dramatic push to increase surveillance, which usually includes the government, the public, and private-sector emergency management professionals."

Nobody I've spoken to says video surveillance isn't useful or doesn't have its place. But whether or not surveillance cameras make us significantly safer is a matter of debate:

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In debating a bill that would repeal a 70-year-old ban on retailers selling loss-leaders, Oklahoma House of Representatives Co-Majority Leader Dennis Johnson (a Republican, of course) argued that service is more important than price at his appliance store, explaining of his customers: "They might try to Jew me down on a price."

About 20 seconds later, after being passed a note, Johnson makes all better. "I apologize to the Jews," a contrite Johnson says to a round of nervous laughter from his colleagues. Then he goes on to flatter us: "They're good small businessmen as well."

Um... thanks?

In Johnson's defense, at least he didn't use the phrase "nigger-rigging."

"Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I'm furious."

Seattle Transit Blog has a great piece showing how Seattle City Council president Sally Clark is engaging in misleading anti-transit politics and trying to smear the pro-transit mayor. The council likes to pretend they're the "adults in the room." But it's the council's leader who is acting childish.

Slog tipper Luke alerted me to this ridiculous post on Glenn Beck's The Blaze, in which Beck announces that he's better at basketball than President Obama.

The notable thing about this post, though, is the comments, which have gotten even worse than Blaze comment threads used to be. Many of them posit that President Obama is bad at sports because he is gay, and most of them use hateful language that you should avoid reading if you're already feeling bad about the world today. What has dragged out the homophobia on this Blaze story? Is it the fact that this post is about sports, a realm where institutional homophobia is still pretty much acceptable? Is it because President Obama endorsed gay marriage, and so now he must be gay himself? Or does it suggest something larger—the fact that homophobia is finally not accepted in the world at large, so it's forced homophobes from mainstream conservative sites into the political fringes, where Beck now sits?

If you have the moral strength to read terrible comments, or if you have a ghastly curiosity to see what Beck's fandom is like these days, you should join me after the jump. Otherwise, go have a nice day.

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Lots of recent articles (including ones in this paper) have been writing around the edges of domestic surveillance drones, clumsily stumbling through the ethics and implications of this new technology. Why the clumsiness? Because this technology is so new, moving faster than the laws or philosophical underpinning that should govern it, that anyone who's trying to sort it all out is basically groping in the dark.

But this piece by Glenn Greenwald—"Domestic drones and their unique dangers," over at the Guardian last month—nails why drone technology is a difference of kind, not just of degree, in state surveillance. It's well-reported, clearly written, lucidly argued, and is required reading for anyone who cares about drones—supporter or critic—or civil liberties.

And the issue of domestic surveillance drones, it turns out, is also an opportunity for hope for those of us worried about state surveillance:

What is most often ignored by drone proponents, or those who scoff at anti-drone activism, are the unique features of drones: the way they enable more warfare, more aggression, and more surveillance. Drones make war more likely precisely because they entail so little risk to the war-making country. Similarly, while the propensity of drones to kill innocent people receives the bulk of media attention, the way in which drones psychologically terrorize the population - simply by constantly hovering over them: unseen but heard - is usually ignored, because it's not happening in the US, so few people care (see this AP report from yesterday on how the increasing use of drone attacks in Afghanistan is truly terrorizing local villagers). It remains to be seen how Americans will react to drones constantly hovering over their homes and their childrens' schools, though by that point, their presence will be so institutionalized that it will be likely be too late to stop.

Notably, this may be one area where an actual bipartisan/trans-partisan alliance can meaningfully emerge, as most advocates working on these issues with whom I've spoken say that libertarian-minded GOP state legislators have been as responsive as more left-wing Democratic ones in working to impose some limits. One bill now pending in Congress would prohibit the use of surveillance drones on US soil in the absence of a specific search warrant, and has bipartisan support.

And for those who wonder why state surveillance matters at all—and especially why it should matter to people who are rules-following non-criminals who think they've got nothing to hide—see this lecture by Mr. Greenwald on the society-wide harms of state surveillance. I'll post one early excerpt from the speech below the jump.

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Politico reports on the political-themed speech you wish you had attended today:

Protesters repeatedly interrupted a speech by Karl Rove on Tuesday, calling the former White House adviser a “murderer” and “terrorist” for his role in the invasion of Iraq.
...
Rove stood his ground against the protesters, and gave a simple answer when one student asked if he would still invade Iraq knowing what he knew today.

“Yes,” Rove said.

Rove also complained of double-standards, saying that protesters would never give Hillary Clinton a hard time for voting in favor of the Iraq War. That's true. No liberals would ever protest Hillary for her vote on Iraq. That is something that has never happened.