495.5: taking safety for granted
I think I lost my chance--I waited too long to find a full article about a recent story, and Google only seems to turn up part of it, of only a related story, so now you have to go on my fuzzy memory :p which is unfair, but it's another generalization ANYWAY... 9_9
The first part of the story is that parents have been installing "Nanny-Cams" to catch nannies in the act of abusing their children when they become suspicious of abuse. [In the one that I was looking for, the child had looked very off-colour and had a strange diaper rash--suspicious signs of neglect/abuse.] This just seems to make sense--if I hire a nanny to watch my child, and my child is being abused, I'm going to take steps to stop that, right?
The second part is what's been nagging at me: a lawyer was speaking out against the Nanny-Cams as an invasion of privacy, and that the cameras do nothing to protect the children.
WHAT.
First of all, this is an individual's private home, to do with what s/he wants, so it's perfectly acceptable for that person to install a camera to monitor basically a stranger in my home, watching their most irreplaceable possessions. You can't go into someone else's house and expect that you have free reign to do whatever you want there without penalty, after all--it's not YOUR house. As for the need to monitor you while you're in that person's house... well, if you happen to do something bad, it's impossible to go back and record the act as evidence after the fact--cameras are a pre-emptive measure. [Obviously, no one is going to bother recording you without reason, as that's a waste of film and money. As stated, though, the parents involved in the story had reason to suspect the nannies.]
Second, no, it does NOT protect the children--nothing would short of hiring someone to watch the nanny/watching the nanny yourself [which defeats the point, doesn't it?]. However, it provides a defense against allowing the nanny to continue abusing a child AND getting paid for it. Considering the options, I'd figure that having a Nanny-Cam would be an acceptable arrangement. Unless you're abusive to the children, what do you as a nanny really have to fear from a Nanny-Cam?
I'm actually annoyed that I can't find the rest of that lawyer's argument, because I really want to understand why he thinks allowing the nannies to continue abusing the children under their care is preferable to invading their supposed privacy. They are in a place of employment--I'm being recorded at work, so I don't understand why a nanny would be exempt from such an "invasion" of privacy except in the obvious places, like a bathroom [the cameras in question were in living rooms/dens]. Without actually hearing his argument, though, I can only suppose that maybe he's saying this to get a kind of Jack Thompson fame, by being famous for saying something controvertial [but STOOPIT].
Overall, it seems like another matter of security vs. privacy, which is another of those compromises we have as a society. In exchange for the benefit of other people protecting us if someone comes to beat us up, we give up certain freedoms, like the freedom to go in and beat up someone else because you want his shiny rock, or whatever prehistoric humans did. The problem is that with prevention, it's impossible to truly measure what we have until it fails. On 10 September 2001, could you truly have appreciated the measures that had been taken to make airlines as safe as they were? On that day, would you have demanded they have been made safer?
Summary: I find more reasons every day that I don't want to have children... ¬_¬ the least of which seems to be that I would end up with Millie as a daughter :/
I did, however, find this commentary, as unrelated as it is. Seems appropriate to other feelings I harbour myself--"Leave other people alone. If you don't like something, avoid it, and don't try to keep people who want to do it from doing it." |:/ [Not that I understand how that turns up in a search for nannies/Nanny-Cams, though.]
Totally unrelated: I'm confused as to why the latest semagic has a Location tab now... 99.9% of these posts are going to be "at my goddamn computer" if I start filling that out... \:'
The first part of the story is that parents have been installing "Nanny-Cams" to catch nannies in the act of abusing their children when they become suspicious of abuse. [In the one that I was looking for, the child had looked very off-colour and had a strange diaper rash--suspicious signs of neglect/abuse.] This just seems to make sense--if I hire a nanny to watch my child, and my child is being abused, I'm going to take steps to stop that, right?
The second part is what's been nagging at me: a lawyer was speaking out against the Nanny-Cams as an invasion of privacy, and that the cameras do nothing to protect the children.
WHAT.
First of all, this is an individual's private home, to do with what s/he wants, so it's perfectly acceptable for that person to install a camera to monitor basically a stranger in my home, watching their most irreplaceable possessions. You can't go into someone else's house and expect that you have free reign to do whatever you want there without penalty, after all--it's not YOUR house. As for the need to monitor you while you're in that person's house... well, if you happen to do something bad, it's impossible to go back and record the act as evidence after the fact--cameras are a pre-emptive measure. [Obviously, no one is going to bother recording you without reason, as that's a waste of film and money. As stated, though, the parents involved in the story had reason to suspect the nannies.]
Second, no, it does NOT protect the children--nothing would short of hiring someone to watch the nanny/watching the nanny yourself [which defeats the point, doesn't it?]. However, it provides a defense against allowing the nanny to continue abusing a child AND getting paid for it. Considering the options, I'd figure that having a Nanny-Cam would be an acceptable arrangement. Unless you're abusive to the children, what do you as a nanny really have to fear from a Nanny-Cam?
I'm actually annoyed that I can't find the rest of that lawyer's argument, because I really want to understand why he thinks allowing the nannies to continue abusing the children under their care is preferable to invading their supposed privacy. They are in a place of employment--I'm being recorded at work, so I don't understand why a nanny would be exempt from such an "invasion" of privacy except in the obvious places, like a bathroom [the cameras in question were in living rooms/dens]. Without actually hearing his argument, though, I can only suppose that maybe he's saying this to get a kind of Jack Thompson fame, by being famous for saying something controvertial [but STOOPIT].
Overall, it seems like another matter of security vs. privacy, which is another of those compromises we have as a society. In exchange for the benefit of other people protecting us if someone comes to beat us up, we give up certain freedoms, like the freedom to go in and beat up someone else because you want his shiny rock, or whatever prehistoric humans did. The problem is that with prevention, it's impossible to truly measure what we have until it fails. On 10 September 2001, could you truly have appreciated the measures that had been taken to make airlines as safe as they were? On that day, would you have demanded they have been made safer?
Summary: I find more reasons every day that I don't want to have children... ¬_¬ the least of which seems to be that I would end up with Millie as a daughter :/
I did, however, find this commentary, as unrelated as it is. Seems appropriate to other feelings I harbour myself--"Leave other people alone. If you don't like something, avoid it, and don't try to keep people who want to do it from doing it." |:/ [Not that I understand how that turns up in a search for nannies/Nanny-Cams, though.]
Totally unrelated: I'm confused as to why the latest semagic has a Location tab now... 99.9% of these posts are going to be "at my goddamn computer" if I start filling that out... \:'