After reading the front page story about the Summit County Sheriff’s Office plan to expand Big Brother’s mass surveillance cameras throughout Silverthorne, I’m reminded once again that Summit County government at nearly every level will leave no stone unturned in its quest to systematically destroy liberty. 

Much like the liberty-killing legislation passed post-9/11 in Washington, we are told by Rep. Joe Neguse (the man who secured the taxpayer money to pay for the Flock Cameras) that this latest assault on freedom via mass-surveillance cameras is necessary because it will keep us safe. And just like the PATRIOT Act, this expansion of mass surveillance will come with a truckload of unintended consequences that will further erode what little liberty we have left in our once country. 

“You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” — George Orwell, “1984.”

The fiction of George Orwell has become a reality, creating an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state. And to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office and other local officials jumping on the Big Brother bandwagon, let me say that “1984” was not supposed to be an instruction manual.