"Big Brother probably is watching already anyways"

There's a growing rumor that New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the uncrowned king of smoking bans, might run for president. Fred Siegel (read California Tim Cavanaugh's review of his Rudy bio here) grabs a radio interview with Bloomberg where the mayor pooh-poohs the scare over small planes flying into buildings (good) and declares, basically, the end of privacy.

In terms of putting cameras up on every corner, you know, if it fights crime, I guess. The civil liberties issue of somebody watching you, that's come and gone. There are cameras today at virtually every corner. So many buildings, so many stores have cameras that whenever there's a crime one of the first things police do is they go to all the buildings in the neighborhood and say, "Do you have cameras? Can we look at the tapes?" This issue of Big Brother watching--Big Brother probably is watching already anyways and you can have an intellectual debate as to whether it's right or wrong, but in a practical sense it's here, and we're not rolling it back.

Yes, this carefully considered view of the government's ability to monitor you is exactly what we'll need in the next president.