Libertarianism is a theory of justice. In fact, it is the only theory that can be rationally justified, and therefore the only valid one. This theory deals with the legitimate use of force in society, which can be summarized as the defense of property rights and the punishment of aggression against people and their property. Consequently, the issue of justice is the most important thing for libertarians. And that is why libertarians long to live in a society where justice reigns, where impunity is not allowed, and where every crime against property rights committed is punished. With the current technological stage of surveillance and such tools as facial recognition and artificial intelligence, this is arguably possible in many places. However, with the current statist social order, is this desirable?
Recently in New York, cameras captured the images of the murder of the CEO of the largest health insurance company in the United States, committed by a masked man. As New York is one of the most camera-monitored cities in the world, the police were able to follow the masked man’s footsteps, captured by several cameras. Finally, five days after the crime, it was possible to see his face on camera when he briefly lowered his mask to flirt with the hostel’s receptionist where he stayed. The killer, Luigi Mangione, was captured 280 miles away from the crime scene. If he had remained in New York after being identified, he would probably have been caught earlier, due to the Domain Awareness System of New York, a system that integrates the images of 18,000 cameras with the police database for real-time surveillance.
The city of São Paulo, where I live, has an even larger surveillance system, the Smart Sampa, with 25,000 cameras integrated with facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence to monitor suspicious activities and identify those wanted by the courts. Since it was implemented in July 2024, the system has allowed the capture of more than a thousand fugitives and 2,289 arrests in flagrante delicto. Though huge, the system covers only a small percentage of the city’s public space, and many crimes are committed outside the coverage area, so many criminals remain unidentified. If 100% of the city’s area was monitored by the system and everyone who entered the city was previously identified, no criminal would remain anonymous in public places. Such a scenario already exists in some places in the city.
I am a member of a sport club that has implemented a system like this, where the entire area, except for the locker rooms, is monitored by cameras. If you leave your mobile, your wallet or any object somewhere, and it disappears, you just go to the surveillance center, indicate the approximate place and time of the event and the case is closed. Since everyone who enters the club is identified in advance, anyone stealing something in the monitored areas will be recognized and suffer the consequences. As a result, practically no thefts occur in the club, because the wannabe thief knows that he would be caught. It’s nice to be able to leave my iPhone in any corner and know that no one will touch it. The only place in the club where thefts still occur is the only place that is not monitored by cameras: the locker rooms. Of course, for privacy reasons, there are no cameras in the locker rooms. But with AI that automatically clouds the private parts in the images of cameras, it is already possible to monitor bathrooms and locker rooms as well.
The same goes for other types of infractions committed on the premises of the club: aggressions, vandalism, etc. Everything is recorded, those involved are identified, duly judged, and the victims are repaired. Nothing could be better for those who value justice, right? Not always, as the system can also be used to commit injustices. This has already occurred during the Covid tyranny, when the club complied with the protocols of the health dictatorship, such as the ridiculous rules for gyms to “operate 6 hours a day, with 30% capacity, prior scheduling, individual training, cleaning of equipment three times a day and mandatory use of face mask”. The use of a face mask was also mandatory in all areas of the club, including outdoors. This complete stupidity of wearing masks to prevent the spread of a virus was strictly imposed at all times with the help of the surveillance system of the club. For example, a friend who on a rainy day, at 6 o’clock in the morning, was running on the completely empty athletics track, had the image of his face with the mask lowered to his chin captured by the cameras and received a warning for this infraction. As it is a private club, there is always the option of stopping attending (I stayed 3 years, from March 2020 to March 2023, without stepping a foot in the club) or leaving permanently. But there is a substantial difference between being forced to comply with private rules and being forced to comply with state legislation. As Schumpeter’s famous quote says:
The theory that construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or of the purchase of the services of, say, a doctor only proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from scientific habits of mind.
The despot mayor Bruno Covas, along with the tyrant governor João Doria, also made the use of face masks mandatory on the streets of São Paulo for almost two years. Well, I never wore a face mask and walked the streets of the city every day during this period without any “authority” reprimanding me or punishing me for this “crime”. There was a ban in place, with the threat of a fine, but as I noted at the time, there was no enforcement. Without the easy option of simply stopping attendance or disassociating oneself from the city, I can only imagine the hell it would be if surveillance on the streets of the city was like the surveillance of my club. I would have received hundreds of fines and would have been arrested. This example makes it clear that it is not desirable for a state to have the capacity for total surveillance. On the other hand, we still ardently wish that thieves, murderers, rapists, kidnappers, etc., do not remain anonymous and unpunished. And on the streets of São Paulo there are many thousands of thefts, assaults, murders, rapes, kidnappings, etc. Are we facing an insoluble dilemma?
The obvious but distant solution is the privatization of all public space and its insertion into a libertarian social order, where only real crimes—with victims—are fought. But in the statist social order we live in, it seems that the issue boils down to the exchange of freedom for security, which brings us to Benjamin Franklin’s warning, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety“. Yes, we would be safer from private criminals, but at the same time we would be totally at the mercy of state banditry, and forcing people to wear a face mask is not the only crime committed by this gang. The list of state crimes is colossal, such as large-scale theft of taxes, censorship or invasion of one’s own body with mandatory vaccines. Imagine no one being able to escape any criminal imposition of the state against individuals—Orwell already did. The CIA, which created the myth of Chinese Social Credit, imagined and propagated this dystopic idea, fooling many people to believe that this already exists in China.
However, this crossroads between choosing a scenario of impunity and rampant private crime or an Orwellian dystopia is misleading. There are other ways to fight common criminals, without having to surrender our freedoms and privacy to state criminals. To begin with, high crime is a consequence of the state itself, which monopolizes policing and justice, being lenient with real criminals and even prevents people from defending themselves from them by disarming them. Repealing the ban on carrying guns would already considerably reduce crime. On the other hand, most of the fight against crime is already done by the market and not by the state. There are many more private security guards than police officers, and the billionaire market for security products supplies almost everything in the private sector, from padlocks and electric fences up to armored doors and cars. In addition, if the monitoring system of the city of São Paulo has 25,000 cameras, the private cameras in the city already exceed millions, and many crimes are caught and criminals are identified by these cameras, whose images the owners can release only to fight real crimes. I want every criminal to be identified and punished, but we don’t need the state for that. And yet, the very state is preventing this from fully happening—hindering surveillance, security and justice in private hands.
