He built his own iteration on the Flock/Axon cameras that the watchers are using to watch us only these cameras watch the watchers. You'd think they wouldn't mind. After all, if they've got nothing to hide . . .

Of course, the watchers – law enforcement, as they accurately like to style themselves – did not like it. They paid a visit to Sistilli's home to make that plain.

"We just want to ask you what the main goal is," one of the watchers asks. "What (do) you plan to do with all of that"?

When we – the watched – ask the same question, the watchers invariably say it's all about keep us "safe." Of course, it's actually about keeping us watched. That is, keeping us under constant surveillance, like they do in prisons. The key difference being we're nominally not inside the prison. We are – nominally – presumed innocent and thus supposed to be free to go about our presumptively legitimate business in public. What's happening, via these cameras that are tied into the data centers that are being erected at a furious pace all over the country, is an attempt to systematically and nationally upend that precedent.

These cameras ought to be seen as the expansion of the principle established by "sobriety" checkpoints and the TSA rigmarole at airports to everywhere.

That principle being the presumption of guilt – presented as necessary to protect us from the guilty. Since there might be drunk drivers out on the road, everyone out on the road is presumed to be drunk. They must prove they are not drunk. Since a "terrorist" might try to hijack a commercial airliner, everyone who wants to fly commercially (but not privately) must be frisked and searched and given a once-over on the presumption that they might be a "terrorist."

There is another purpose, of course – which is what they call "fishing." While you are trying to prove you aren't drunk at a "sobriety" checkpoint, the enforcer is looking for other things he can enforce, such as an out-of-date inspection or registration sticker and also whether your license is valid – which has nothing to do with whether you're drunk. It's the same at the airports. The TSA geeks rummage through your stuff – as well as your junk – and if they find something you're not supposed to have, they'll take it. Maybe they'll take you, too. It need not be anything that has to do with "terrorism."