Orwell's ghost grinned when the Sunday News hit the stands.

Maybe it's a sign of our time when a liberal-minded reporter like Gil Smart pens a piece lauding the fact that the people of Lancaster will be watched over by a jury of nincompoops in a viewing booth.

He found no source for a dissenting opinion on this troubling development that he finds praiseworthy: Lancaster stakeholders headed up by the Steinman family will install surveillance cameras throughout the city ("... thanks to a broad coalition of public and private souces."). How about asking the opinion of one of many Lancaster taxpayers who will have to pay the salaries, benefits and pensions of the joystick operators?

How about the inequality of the installation plan? Are there more existing and phase 1 cameras in our neighborhoods of color? Of course there are!

This is not the future I want to see.

Will there be no public discussion of this matter? If no, that's a real shame, despicable in fact.

The irony is so thick ... Mayor Gray and others of such ilk, who shout about troubling aspects of the Patriot Act, seem to have no problem with a camera watching their front door!