Big Brother

I spent the majority of today hanging new monitors in the security office so, as the big bad wolf put it, "it will be easier to see you with."

Va Tech was horrible.  I would never make light of that episode of American history.  But for the people in the business it became an opportunity to move security merchandise and really play to the fears of the administrators.

What if....

What if a shooter comes on campus.

I think I came to the conclusion long ago that if a shooter or any other homicidal maniac decides to cut loose then there is only so much that can be done in the initial phase and by that time the damage will be done.

What we would end up with is a lot of very good angles of high resolution video of the incident all to be leaked out on to You Tube or one of the other seedier sites that cater to the morbid.

But we have them... cameras all around.  Tracking, monitoring, maybe they are listening... maybe they aren't.

Little digital crime solvers just waiting to document the unthinkable.

But me... I am caught in the middle.  I know what you are thinking.  You guys can invade our privacy.  You can read our emails.  You can look at our files.  You are creepy people.

But then again... if we don't and we adopt an attitude of digital laissez-faire and let whatever be will be then we will hear:  You let our data get stolen -- you lost our files.  You weren't doing your job.

So which is it?  Do we go all out with the security stopping at nothing to document everything.  9/11 and VaTech just put us in a perpetual state of conflict on this.  We want privacy but we don't.   We want to be protected but at what price.

I had a guy in the business tell me one time that terror was good for him.  It put food on the table.  When things got bad.  When people got shot.  When motorcades were blown apart he was put into a position of being able to sell stuff.

Same for me.  I can always easily justify new servers on the same principal... If we don't upgrade then we will probably have something bad happen to us and then how would that look.  But it's true.  If we do not stay one step ahead of the latest cyber boneheads then bad things will probably happen.

Round and round she goes, where she stops......

I don't know.  Orwell just got the year wrong.  The rest cannot be discussed.

But next week I will probably have three more vendors call me wanting me to mass broadcast emergency information.   Have the students panic in mass let them all know at once via mass email, text, and loudspeaker that bad stuff is happening.

And it will....  or not.... but if it does it will be documented by Big Brother.