Victorian Police will be using surveillance drones to spy on civilians and ensure no one is violating restrictions during the AFL grand final over the weekend.
Premier Dan Andrews said during a recent press conference that nobody should have a problem with the surveillance drones flying over their house if they are not doing anything wrong.
“They can fly drones over my place because no one will be doing anything wrong,” Andrews told reporters. “We’ll be following the rules. And no one should have any problem with that, frankly.”
Andrews went on to essentially encourage Victorians to report to the police any neighbours they suspect of illegal gatherings.
“There are allegedly hundreds of thousands of Victorians who have rung the police assistance line because they’ve had a suspicion that next door or across the road or down the street are doing the wrong thing,” he said.
“And they’re doing the right thing and they’re angry about it. And some people sort of look down their noses, ‘Oh, dobbing in your neighbour.’ Well, no neighbour has the right to do the wrong thing.”
Dan Andrews says no one should have a problem with police flying surveillance drones over their house if they’re obeying the rules.
— Caldron Pool (@CaldronPool) October 22, 2020
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As George Orwell put it in his now often-cited, near-prophetic novel, 1984, “Big Brother is watching you.” But what’s most remarkable is just how many people think this sort of thing is perfectly acceptable. After all, the authorities are only looking out for us, right?
Well, it was C.S. Lewis who rightly warned that such government may be the most oppressive of all. Surely the Victorian government is a testament to the veracity of that claim!
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive,” Lewis wrote. “It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
“The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”