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New Hampshire's state motto "Live Free or Die" is becoming increasingly incomprehensible to many Americans. Most of us seem more interested in living securely than living freely, not realizing that increased security is often obtained at the expense of liberty and privacy.

I was reminded of that a few weeks ago when New York City decided that all of its taxis must have a GPS tracking device. And again this week, when a SUNY professor told me he is now required to report any student who writes stories that contain violence, have excessive swearing or are deemed odd by the professor. This, of course, is in response to the Virginia Tech shootings earlier this year. One wonders how Jack London, Edgar Allan Poe or even William Shakespeare would have fared in such an English department.

Earlier this year SUNY Cobleskill overreacted to a web photo of a Sri Lankan student holding a shotgun. The student was harmless, yet he was suspended from school for five days and forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

In the past few years, we have seen an explosion of surveillance and not just the illegal wiretapping by the Bush administration. You can hardly go anywhere now without your photo being taken. We have traffic cams, license plate readers, security cameras at businesses, and millions of Americans walking around with camera phones. Over the past five years a group of New York Civil Liberties Union volunteers have been combing Manhattan in an effort to map every security camera. So far they have found 2,397, and they are not done.

While we don't have as many cameras in upstate New York, they have arrived and more are coming. In his July 2007 newsletter, State Senator Hugh Farley praised the use of video cameras in Schenectady and Mayor Brian Stratton is quoted as saying, "Schenectady's camera surveillance project is proving so effective in preventing and fighting crime that it is considered a model program for New York and the nation. Thanks to Senator Farley's continued partnership and generous support, we are expanding the camera project to more areas of our city."

The last time I went to purchase Sudafed at Rite-Aid for my sinusitis, I had to show the pharmacist my driver's license and sign a register, all because of a clause in the Patriot Act. And the federal government has used National Security Letters (administrative subpoenas) to requisition people's library records. (For those of you who argue "So what. I have nothing to hide," please feel free to send me

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