Then I moved on to the opinion section where Olivia Judson has a piece titled “Feel The Eyes Upon You“.  She refers to a some scientific studies that have been done trying to understand how people react when they feel they are being watched.  In situations where people feel they are being watched, even subconsciously, it has been shown that the subjects change their behaviors.  Judson points to the eyes that are watching and ends her piece questioning if we should place more pictures of eyes around and see how they effect crime rates.  

I finished Judson’s piece and was torn.  Lets say we don’t take the eyes from the studies so literally.  What if everyone knew that all criminal offenses are published in an online database like CriminalSearches.com?  Would that make our society better as a whole because everyone would be worried that someone can “see” what they have done?  Although one part of me thinks we should test out putting eyes everywhere and that an online database is the right start, a larger part says no.  I believe that people can change and publishing their crimes in indelible ink on the web will cripple them for the rest of their lives.  

Although swayed slightly by Judson’s piece, the privacy advocate and humanist in me won out.  We need to figure out how to stop sites like CriminalSearches.com from distributing private information to the public for free and so easily.

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