United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated outside of a New York City hotel on December 4, 2024. The story was big news. If the suspect, Luigi Mangione, had killed a homeless person, no one would have known or cared. He certainly wouldn’t be facing the death penalty.

There was a security camera at the entrance to the hotel. Mangione could be seen firing a handgun at Thompson. When he walked away, private security cameras captured glimpses of his movements in real time. Starbucks had a camera trained on the cashier’s station. All of this was very quickly pieced together by law enforcement.

You can’t walk down the sidewalk in the suburbs without being seen by doorbell cameras. Every convenience store has a security camera. Every bank, every pharmacy, every supermarket, every department store, even traffic lights. If they can use the ubiquitous surveillance devices to follow the movements of a suspected criminal, they can follow anyone, for any reason.

If you’re planning on going missing or being a person of interest, be sure to clear your browsing history. That’s public information. There is a lot of your personal data that are fair game for law enforcement agencies and corporate news outlets. When you do just about anything on your computer–including making a purchase at Amazon–you are being tracked. Facebook keeps track of the posts you stop scrolling on, and they record how much time you spend looking at each post. Be careful what you search for–someone else might find it.

In some respects, things have been turned upside down these past several years. It’s like Big Brother has a kid sister. A lot of people carry telephones with built in cameras. Citizens now keep an eye on the actions of the police. There have been murders by rogue cops caught on cellphone cameras. Many police officers wear body cameras, but I’ll bet that most precincts have access to someone who is skilled at manipulating video images. Enforcement agencies can take as long as they like to release their footage.

It all comes down to the reality of the situation. The technology exists for someone to watch you through your webcam without your knowledge. It really does. To have a piece of electrical tape over your laptop camera–is that prudence or is it paranoia?

The electric bike Mangione took had a GPS tracker.