We were required to read 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, and Lord of the Flies. But the issues they dealt with were remote, and the books themselves boring and poorly written by today's standards. Personally, I'm not fussed by privately owned security cameras. I LOVE them... in the hands of the public. I'd rather that everyone be allowed to carry cameras and record anything they wish, and be allowed to place cameras anywhere on their property, than that cameras be restrained. Cameras are our current best weapon against authority. This is why the "don't photograph police" law is deeply bad. The cameras I do object to are networked cameras in the hands of authority, with face and numberplate recognition to get more information than "this is who threw the brick through the window". In time, however, even private citizens will be able to dust an entire country in intelligent microcameras (or more likely, the country will be dusted once, with open-access microcameras that anyone can query). Then anyone has that power to track, locate, identify and monitor other people. That will truly level the playing field, but will require a rethink of what privacy even means.