The Freedom Search

That security crowd-sourcing is fashionable these days is not really big news. In the Netherlands, the police asked plain citizens to sniff for illegal marijuana plantations, and here in Spain, We The People™ are the ones who must enforce the new anti-tobacco law.
The Ministress of Tic-tac-toe The Healthcare™, The Equality™ and The Social Policy™ herself encouraged us to inform denounce anonymously, and on the radio I heard about “Bars and restaurants who were enforcing the law pretty good”.

But in a little city near Tarragona, The People™ has decided to fight the economic crisis in a funny way. It is no longer a city, but a real gulag in which a network of informants good citizens work with the police to warn of Suspicious Behavior™ as exchanging objects, two people shaking hands, new cars in the neighbourhood, or just what they deem appropriate.

I don’t know if the initiative is to assemble a sort of theme park related to the STASI and the GDR or the KGB and the USSR, but it’s really… eeerr… surprising?

Best of all is that the network of informers is made of retired grannies who, instead of looking at the street works and annoying people pretending to be deaf, now they can put their critical capacity to new uses.

As the Mayor say, cities such London already launched similar initiatives, but what is not being discussed are the results: electrified diabetics, citizens being dramatically arrested in the street in broad daylight while bearing a music player…

Untrained and plain citizens should not and can not be the first line of defence or to be responsible for security tasks. In any case. One thing is the cooperation of citizens, but this is a kibbutz, a gulag which encourages everyone to watch everyone, destroying personal trust in the name of security and the Common Good™. The worst thing of all is that some people are applauding…