The Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 13: “Washington police are building what will be the nation’s biggest network of surveillance cameras to monitor shopping areas, streets, monuments and other public places in the U.S. Capitol, a move that worries civil libertarians.”
Foggy Bottom Metro station camera inaugural Feb. 15 log entries:
8:30 a.m. – Large mass of people form an ant-like throng around the Metro station; the air is filled with a collective dread of the coming workday.
10:24 a.m. – A tourist carrying George Orwell’s 1984 makes an ironic statement without even knowing it.
12:12 p.m. – Upon closer inspection, a black man singing about a machine gun turns out to be a guitarist playing a Jimi Hendrix cover.
1:34 p.m. – Greenpeace activists preach communist ideology to law-abiding students, who largely ignore them.
2:44 p.m. – Hot dog vendor is selling food for suspiciously low prices. Sure, $1 can buy you a 20-minute phone call and it’s only 10 cents a minute after that, but it shouldn’t be able to buy you a hot dog.
3:10 p.m. – Homeless man looks on as annoying kids with rich parents complain about the weather.
3:21 p.m. – Upon closer inspection, a man selling flowers is actually selling flowers.
4:51 p.m. – Greenpeace activists and animal rights activists are rounded up and sent to Guantanamo Bay.
5:04 p.m. – Large mass of people stream home after another unfulfilling day at work. They try to mask their intense frustration with blank expressions, but it’s no use.
5:42 p.m. – Osama bin Laden boards orange line, heads toward Clarendon, Va.
6:20 p.m. – A college-aged man of Middle Eastern descent mouths the words “Bush is a moron” and is immediately whisked away into a Sunnyside Flowers van by two identical men in sharp suits and sunglasses who insist on calling him Mr. Anderson.
7:29 p.m. – A record nine people talking on cell phones pass by the Metro station, inspiring a loathing feeling in the pit of this camera monitor’s stomach.
10:54 p.m. – Homeless man strikes GW student in the head with metal pipe and steals his wallet and clothes, but nobody seems to care.
12:11 a.m. – Massive drug deal goes down, but it has nothing to do with terrorism.
-The writer, a sophomore majoring in history, is a Hatchet columnist.