Asklemmy

Before security cameras were everywhere, things felt 'normal'. There have been security cameras in store for a looong time before everyone had them -- so common even the culture touchstone movie Terminator (1984) showed their use and they were common well before that.

Unlike most folks, it took me over a decade to come to grips with the loss of anonymity. Once the internet existed, I never entered my actual name into anything online, wouldn't join facebook, and wouldn't let anyone take my picture lest they attach my name to it. Eventually, I realized that even if I didn't put my name online, everyone with my phone number put me in THEIR address books and anonymity was simply a lost cause.

At the same time, I've noticed that news/tv no longer show faces in their generic street-scene footage about anything that might be damaging (like 'How fat is our town?') and instead just show people waist-down, blurred, or very distant. That also happens a lot for less embarrassing content, and there's generally less footage of generic local people.

That said, I'm really glad everyone has a cell phone with camera to catch bad police behavior. Lots of people used to dismiss such reports as people with a grudge making stuff up, but now there's too much evidence to hide it.