Our view: Deputies public spying system offends liberty

Vista deputies seem just delighted with their new, $20,000 spy camera, which is capable of secretly watching people for days at a time. We are decidedly less thrilled.

It is hard to imagine a more blatant and offensive invasion of privacy: Government officials using a hidden camera to record ordinary folks as they go about their business. This is downright creepy.

Sheriff's deputies hasten to explain that they will spy only on public areas with the camera, which is disguised as a utility box and capable of beaming days' worth of video signals to remote receivers. The cops say that they intend to watch public areas where crime has been a problem.

Indeed, officials say that if they decide to secretly install their camera across the street from your house, their computer is capable of blacking out the view through your bedroom window.

Of course, we predicted that police cameras were next after North County cities began installing those infernal red-light cameras. We are sorry to be right on this one.

Of course, there are some who say that if someone isn't committing a crime, what's the big deal? After all, deputies have better things to do than stare at innocent folks walking the dog or struggling to parallel park.

And federal police have been using cameras to bust mob bosses for decades. Besides, with a week of video records to work with, Vista deputies can easily catch the punks who sprayed all that grafitti or mugged that little old lady.

Yet it's pretty easy to grasp how creepy and invasive the Vista cops are poised to become. Instead of a camera, imagine that a man stood on your corner, simply watching. After a few hours of watching this guy watch you pruning the bushes and taking the kids to school, you would surely call the police to report a stalker or Peeping Tom, especially if his spot on the corner offered him a view through the living room window.

Students of police power have observed for centuries that officials always have a darn good reason to trample privacy and liberty in pursuit of greater security. Cops and prosecutors always want more authority -- and they always must be limited.

At the foundation of liberty is the right to walk down the street and be left alone; to travel with some degree of anonymity. Governments shouldn't be watching people, tracking movements, recording purchases, compiling data, reading mail, or anything else unless they first have good reason for suspicion. If somebody breaks a law, by all means police should go get them.

But officials must not watch a vast public just in case something happens.

Police could solve far more crimes if they just installed cameras in everybody's living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms. No more domestic violence, no more child abuse, no more pot smoking.

To be sure, a secret camera mounted in a public place is different. But not much. Hundreds of private, innocent people will be captured on Vista's spy recordings.

What's fair is fair, we suppose. So we also stand ready to oppose any plans to install video cameras to record the people who visit the homes and offices of Vista's council members, San Diego County supervisors and Sheriff Bill Kolender.