>>I live in an urban setting, and I understand that if I choose to live in the city instead of out in the country, I need to adapt to noise.
Adaptation is one thing, ludicrous noise levels are another....
>>Yes, there is some noise that breaks the law, but this measure will not catch the drive-by noise polluters...
Add some camera's...
>>and there is already a way to deal with neighbors who regularly make too much noise: report them.
Police get tired of babysitting neighbors. In some neighborhoods, if you call the cops, you are ostracized.
Plus, with illegals who have impunity for the law, they don't care.. They'll turn it down so the cop goes away, and then resume. Since INS ins't coming to get them, they have nothing to lose... They skip court dates, etc..
>>Monitoring everyone (including law abiding citizens) in order to make it easier to catch habitual offenders is unacceptable.
To whom? If you have nothing to hide, no big deal. Everybody is monitored -- beat cops do it. Electronics just make it more efficient.
>>It seems to be the favorite approach of law enforcement these days, though.
Sounds good to me. If you don't have anything to hide, what is your worry? Like I said, the gov't already surveys and watches people. Think cops don't look out for stuff??
There are apparently two schools of thought on this topic - those who feel they have nothing to hide and thus don't mind however much surveillance they are kept under, and those who think it is no one's business how they conduct their (law-abiding) lives and certainly not the business of a faceless bureaucrat.
I do wonder what it will take for the first group to feel it is too much. Some folks don't even mind the idea of random warrantless searches, since they have nothing to hide. By the time the government-has-a-right-to-all crowd gets worried it will be FAR too late.
Sounds like good old fashioned community standards at work -- what's the problem?
Microphones can easily record what's going on inside your house. Do you want everything that is said or done in your house to become part of public record, potentially available for anyone to hear? Can you think of any perfectly legal activities you engage in inside your house that you would not like to be available for public review?