The bigest threat
As annoying and disturbing the idea of banning the use of certain words is, I doubt the ability of practically implement it. It is the idea, that the government should be busy telling people how to behave, that anger me. However the focus should be not at the stupid idea of banning words, nor at the danger of the city enforcing breastfeeding, but on the dangerous plan to build a web of surveillance cameras that will cover big parts of manhattan.
Surely the Mayor, and his administration, talking about the benefits from such networks and promising restricted use of it. However the danger in the temptation of using such power shouldn’t be tested, after all - we already know how much the Mayor like to tell us how to live our life.
The Panopticon, as envisaged by British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), was a society (initially proposed as a prison) in which surreptitious surveillance of the citizenry was always possible and ever-known. Control was exercised not by being surveilled continuously but by each person knowing they might be under surveillance at any time, or all the time.
Bentham was a man ahead of his time. His pet project was never fully carried out because the technology available at the time, relying as it did on direct, physical surveillance (electricity as a harnessable force, with which Benjamin Franklin was just then beginning to experiment, was still more than a century away) made creation of a workable Panopticon infeasible. Were Bentham alive today, he probably would be the most sought-after consultant on the planet.
The key to the surveillance society foreseen by Bentham more than two centuries ago was control. Crime was rampant in late 18th-century and early 19th-century London. Controlling the populace by modifying behavior became the central problem for Bentham and other social scientists of the day.
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Of course, Messrs. Bloomberg and Blair have one benefit available to them that was largely denied Bentham — money. Lots of money. "Homeland security" money taken from the wallets of taxpayers, but treated by government appropriators as theirs by right, is eagerly ladled out for cameras to surveill all. Add the magic words "for fighting terrorism" to your request for federal money and the chances of securing those dollars are made many times greater.
Not only is money readily available for government agencies to install, monitor and expand surveillance systems, but the cameras themselves are magnificent generators of money. Already in London, vehicle owners are billed for using their cars and trucks in certain areas and at certain times, through use of surveillance cameras that photograph, record and track vehicle license plates. The multimillion-dollar system being set up by Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly will almost certainly be similarly employed down the road.