“Big Brother Is Watching You” was the threatening, cautionary motto in “1984”, George Orwell’s cautionary novel of big government controlling the lives and liberties of the individual citizens, who lived every minute under the gaze of government video cameras.

1984 came and went without the stifling repression Orwell predicted, but omnipresent cameras are making a difference in society today – only it is little brother who is watching. More and more, cell phone cameras that record video are keeping an eye on government.

Last Saturday, one such camera caught a police officer in North Charleston, S.C., shooting an unarmed black man in the back as the man fled. The citizen turned over his video to the victim’s family when the police officer’s account of the incident didn’t match the events on the recording. And now Officer Michael Thomas Slager is an ex-officer facing murder charges.

The video recording of the incident prevented this from becoming another Ferguson, Missouri, where the death of an unarmed black man at the hands of a white officer resulted in no indictment by a grand jury and months of demonstrations and unrest across the country. As it is, North Charleston’s black citizens are angry, but at least they know that this death will not be covered up.

There have been incidents where police have arrested citizens or confiscated their cameras for recording them as they conduct an arrest or handle a confrontational situation. It is important that citizens be allowed to freely monitor and record the actions of law enforcement. In the hands of Big Brother, video cameras can threaten freedom, but in the hands of the people, they can protect and preserve them.44