roanoke.com Real Politics / Preston Bryant

Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

Befuddlement envelops more than a few conservatives when liberty bumps up against security, not to mention privacy.

You see, conservatives, by nature, live to take on Big Government, the era of which can never, ever be thought of as over. There is the never-ending fight against �the state,� which will always be so much, too much with us. Lived for is the day when we finally know we�re being governed least, thus best.

Well, that�s what we say. But do we mean it?

All too often, our actions overshadow our words, and we conservatives then get wrapped around our philosophical axle. And, oh, how dizzy it makes us.

This is especially true for law-and-order conservatives. We all agree that the government�s top priority is public safety. We revere those who protect us from our enemies, both foreign and domestic, and we fall all over ourselves to support them � as we should. But we tend to not recognize when in the name of security we whittle away at liberty.

When our good Attorney General John Ashcroft was a U.S. Senator from Missouri, he could always be counted on to call as a spade proposed legislation � whether Democratic or Republican in origin � that encroached on our rights and freedoms, whether speech, assembly, gun ownership, or whatever.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on our country, however, it was Ashcroft himself who authored investigation and surveillance proposals that a few years ago would have been anathema to him. Springing to mind is the sweeping Patriot Act, which allows the federal government to investigate Hoover-style everything from our library reading habits and neighborly associations to the reasons we take flying and scuba lessons.

But it�s not just at the federal level where conservatives seem to blur the lines between security and freedom. It happens in Virginia at the state and local levels, too.

Take, for example, the recurring General Assembly proposals over the past few years to employ surveillance cameras on our citizenry. Generally, the notion goes, we want to capitalize on technology for law-enforcement purposes. That�s noble, but to what extent should it trump conservatives� broader philosophical goal of minimizing Big Brother�s intrusiveness?

Each year, there is legislation � coming mostly from Northern Virginia lawmakers � to authorize local police departments to set up cameras at intersections to nab red light runners. Here, the technology will snap a picture of your rear license plate as you speed through the light you certainly believed to have been yellow. Soon thereafter, you get a ticket in the mail. And in a new take on American justice, it�ll then be up to you to somehow overcome your presumed guilt and prove your innocence.

If you leave Northern Virginia and go to Virginia Beach, you�ll learn about that city�s move to install on its waterfront high-tech scanning cameras loaded with �facial recognition� software. This is where Big Brother takes an image of your face and matches it against thousands of wanted misdemeanants� and felons� pictures in a computer database someplace. Who knows what else somebody, somewhere might be watching you do.

A lot of this came to mind when it was reported over this Independence Day weekend – you know, when we celebrated our declared break more than two centuries ago from an overbearing government – that the city of Lynchburg will begin installing surveillance cameras at various recycling stations to nab those heinous citizens who – get this – throw trash in with the reusable paper, plastic, and aluminum. Presumably, the relatively conservative city council has signed off on this.

Granted, whether you�re driving through an intersection on a public street or walking down the beachfront boardwalk or going to the open-air recycling center, there�s no legitimate expectation of privacy to be had. But just how big and intrusive are conservatives in a largely conservative state going to let Brother get?

All of this goes much beyond Polaroid law enforcement. We conservatives get tangled up in our philosophy on matters extending well beyond the snap of a camera.

The Supreme Court has said a thing or two lately about privacy � namely, that it�s important, but also that it should be respected.

Conservatives � at the federal, state, and local levels of government � should remember that.

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