Everyone is spying on you, especially governments. Most people are familiar with George Orwell’s prophetic novel “Nineteen Eighty Four” where the fictional character Big Brother was the enigmatic dictator of Oceania. This was a totalitarian state where everyone was under complete surveillance by the authorities by television monitors.

Amazingly the book was published in 1949 so Orwell probably wrote it in 1947 as the first manuscript was sent to the publishers early 1948.

As we know cameras are installed everywhere, even invading our privacy as we go about our business in the Cayman Islands.

Every public building has them barring the bathrooms but even there we are monitored when we go in and when we leave. Some of us even install cameras in our homes watching every blade of grass that moves. Watching our employees go about their work.

We were sent minutes the other day by the Deputy Governor Franz Manderson who has put in place transparency in the administrative arm of government allowing us, the public, insight into the workings of the public sector.

According to these minutes concerning a senior civil service meeting, an access system has been installed at the new Government Office Accommodation Building in Elgin Avenue, George Town. This system has the capabilities to record the attendance of employees who work in the building and their movements throughout the entire office block. Rich Sanfilippo, the facilities manager in the ministry responsible for the government’s new headquarters, said the system records the time employees arrive and leave as well as where they are going during the working day.

This system can also provide a detailed report of all employees movements throughout the entire building during a given timeframe, which can be synchronised with video footage. An appointing officer, however, would only be sent these reports, on request.

So where has our trust gone? Are we all untrustworthy? In the USA we are ALL potential terrorists. Who said, “When trust is gone, love is weakened or dead. Where there is fear, there is no love”? Will husbands have cameras trained on their wives and vice-versa?

So, if we have to resort to watching our employees 24 hours of the day that has to mean we don’t trust them? When security cameras have to be installed in a Bank watching our every movement as we retrieve our own money that we have allowed them to do with, as they will, it means they don’t trust us. Shouldn’t we, then, have access to cameras so we can actually watch what they are doing with our money? It’s ours after all. Surely it should be a two way street? It was the banks, after all, that caused the worldwide recession and misery we are all in now. So, are they to be trusted? They don’t trust us and we LET THEM HAVE OUR MONEY!

If this should become reality and we all watch each other just look at all the extra jobs it would create? Why we would be out of this recession in a second. And we could reward ourselves with huge bonuses every time we trap someone from our surveillance. We could spy on the police and why not? We pay their salaries! And don’t forget our politicians. I’m sure they are worth watching!

Let’s watch everyone. Wouldn’t you like to know what YOU are doing?