Welcome. This is James Corbett of Corporate Report.com with the last word on CCTV.

It wasn't long after the introduction of the television camera that those in positions of power

began using it to track and surveil the public.

The first closed circuit television camera was deployed by Siemens AG, a company that

sponsored, funded, and collaborated with the Nazi regime,

so the Nazis could monitor rocket launches

from the safety of a distant bunker.

Within seven years, the first commercial CCTV cameras

were available in the US.

Advertisments for the systems weren weren't pains to point out that they

required no government permit to operate. That claim in itself is interesting.

It's difficult for us in the age of pervasive surveillance technology to appreciate just how thoroughly these technologies have altered our sense of the public and private spheres.

Today Google can send street view vans around the streets of our cities snapping up pictures and

Wi-Fi data alike or the average person can share their most intimate

details with social network friends who they've never even met. Now with

services like Google Latitude you can even allow these friends to track the precise

GPS coordinates of your cell phone in real time. But 60 years ago would-be

purchasers of CCTV cameras had to be reassured that they didn't need a special permit

from the government to monitor their own property.

The difference between the 1940s' understanding of the value of privacy and our current

blase attitude toward electronic snooping is perhaps

best illustrated by 1984. In this classic dystopic vision, Orwell lays bare the potential horrors

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