No Outrage, therefore: No Privacy in Oceania

As we know, "power corrupts and Absolute Power..." would destroy absolutely the only three inalienable rights our federal Republic guarantees: Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. In his prescient Novel, 1984, George Orwell placed his protagonist, Winston Smith, in a future society in which the Government watched all its citizens through TV screens placed everywhere, including all rooms in Mr. Smith's home. Big Brother is all watching, all knowing, so all controlling. Everyone outside of the Stalinist Soviet Union recoiled in horror at the concept of this mad apparition of Absolute Power in the hands of a brutal central government.

Well, loyal listeners from a small tree - in this case a suburban Philadelphia school district, Lower Merion - comes this very poisonous fruit. By loaning lap top computers to its high school students, Merion school administrators watched unsuspecting users of the computers, taking some 56,000 still photos (including in home bedrooms and bathrooms) during periods of hidden live streaming surveillance. Every rational citizen's reaction is: what were these government watchers thinking?

Well, their own e-mails apparently characterized these spying activities as a mere diversion from boredom, entertaining fun, legal because the students had no reasonable expectation of privacy in their own homes when using a computer owned by the government. Unbelievable, almost comical, except that from merely egregious voyeurism, these spy photos were then used to punish at least one student for alleged misconduct in his bedroom medicating himself.

Well, this story has been unfolding for several weeks time, yet I see no statement from the President, or from others in the nation's political class. One shouting outburst by a Harvard professor toward his arresting police officer lead to a rebuke of the purported abuse of power by government personnel in Cambridge. Indeed, that non-event ultimately lead to a full blown beer Summit Meeting, hosted by the President at the White House.

Now, the nation is confronted with a precedent that leads inevitably to tyranny. Nonetheless, the Washington pols remain AWOL. Accordingly, we must make Lower Merion a critical matter of national concern through the public outrage of all of us - any and every citizen who wants to keep the Government's venal watchers out of our homes/bedrooms. Act now or "1984" will be our collective future and not a fictional story of hopeless subservience to Absolute Power. Just saying...