The Olympian loves Big Brother

The paper comes out in favor of Lacey's red light camera experiment, giving no thought to the solution that would almost entirely eliminate the problem--longer yellows and longer four-way reds--and adopting wholesale the tenets of the surveillance society.

Under the state law authorizing red light cameras, the equipment can only capture video of a vehicle and its license plate, not the occupants. That should silence some of the opponents who see the cameras as an invasion of privacy.

But let's face it. Cameras are everywhere in society today.

Pull into a gasoline station and you are on video. Grocery and convenience store cameras capture our every move. Many merchants use video cameras to nab shoplifters. Intercity Transit recently installed cameras in an effort to hold rowdy passengers accountable. And we all know that cameras are a crucial part of the security systems at casinos and banks. Even homeowners have cameras in place as part of their security systems.

Monitoring intersections is a natural extension of cameras.

That's how rights are lost: as a "natural extension" of other losses.

Even if you're unafraid of further surveillance, though, you have to wonder why the city is so bent on a costly solution. It costs nothing to make intersections safer.