From the Oxford American Dictionary:

groupthink |ˈgroōpˌθi ng k|
noun - the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility : there’s always a danger of groupthink when two leaders are so alike.

But dictionary people are always so … clinical. This definition doesn’t address — doesn’t even touch — the sense of warmth that comes from a good session of groupthink. You all know what I’m talking about; it’s that sense of calm that settles on a meeting once everyone has realized that the solution doesn’t offend anyone. In the room. So it must be right. Right?

So, you’re thinking about groupthink. Now, think about Tiburon, California. Tiburon sits on a peninsula on the northern end of the San Fransisco Bay. From there, looking south, you can see the city of San Francisco jutting out across the water. There are only two roads leading in or out of Tiburon. It’s idyllic. It never rains, the people are always happy, and being surrounded by water on three sides, the lapping waves drown out the sound of the poor coming from Oakland.

It’s this setting that makes the following story so much more perfect. Here it is: The Tiburon police department is apparently installing a new system of cameras to be installed on the inbound and outbound routes of the city which will read and register the license plates of every car coming in or out. According to the TPD memo, the system is designed:

(1) as a post-crime investigative tool, and (2) as a real-time license- plate alert system in the event of a crime in progress, such as an abduction, a crime under investigation by the Tiburon Police Department, or a similar search for particular plate numbers.

Do you smell it? It’s the pungent-sweet smell of barbeque pizza from California Pizza Kitchen. Also, it’s the smell of groupthink.

Because it sounds good, this plan of looking at all the license plates. It’s to stop criminals, man. It’s about the crime-fighting! Meanwhile, back at the memo…

Technology is available that takes a single, digital color photograph of the back of each passing car. Optical character recognition software “reads” and stores the license plate numbers. A short-retention data base of plate numbers would enable the TPD to look for patterns that match crimes or to search for certain vehicles that might be wanted in connection with particular crimes. The system could be programmed to search for particular license plates including stolen vehicles, those identified in “Amber Alerts” (missing children alerts) or those involved in crimes under investigation by the Tiburon Police.

See? It’s a short-retention database. They surely wouldn’t actually keep all those plate numbers. No, no … in the meeting they said they wouldn’t because it would be wrong. And wrong is offensive. But, you know, look at what the system could do! We could use it for Amber Alerts! Think of the kids! And stolen cars! And murder! We could use it for murder!

Crime-fighting is such a sweet slippery slope. When you’re making decisions like this, decisions with repercussions that ripple throughout a civic house, and you’re doing it from a place of groupthink, you’re thinking only of the right now. The right now is all that matters, the current problem that must be solved, the puzzle that must be completed. The right now doesn’t think about the ripples throughout the civic house. The right now doesn’t care about consequences beyond those making the call.

I probably don’t have to say this out loud, but there are some citizens concerned with the Tiburon PD plan to be monitored. That’s because it’s flawed at its core. And in the spirit of showing-not-telling, take a look at the privacy disaster that’s come of the UK in this fantastic piece by Cory Doctorow, privacy vigilante and novelist. Bit of brilliance from his piece:

And because of Chekhov’s first law of narrative (“a gun on the mantelpiece in act one will go off by act three”), the police have decided to also use these cameras as a surveillance tool, to “catch terrorists” (and other bad guys). So any police officer can add any license number to the database of “people of interest” and every time that license plate passes a camera, the local police force will receive an urgent alert, and can pull over the car, detain the driver, and search the car and its passengers under the Terrorism Act.

No, no, nonono. That would never happen in our town. Not in Tiburon. Because it would never happen at home, with a plan like this. It’s all about protection. So it was with the Brits, too. And, you know, as falls the British Empire…