Have you ever noticed the black bubble on the ceilings of retail establishments, malls, sometimes schools and hospitals, certainly casinos? Those are not lights but cameras. Big brother is watching you.
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #256 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
America is a free, open, pluralistic society wherein citizens possess God-given human rights—life and liberty—and government civil liberties—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, right to a fair trial, and perhaps right to privacy, and also civil rights—equal access to education, health, protection against discrimination based on race, sex, religion, etc., voting rights.
We rightly value our freedoms, including freedom of mobility. The U.S. Constitution does not specify a right to privacy, but this is one that has been developed over many years and much case law by the Supreme Court of the United States. Of course, it can include things like (3rd Amendment) no forced quartering of soldiers in your home, (4th Amendment) protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, or (5th Amendment) protection against self-incrimination that are mentioned in the Bill of Rights amendments. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court said these amendments create “penumbras,” i.e., zones, of privacy, establishing a constitutional right to privacy.
There are many more such protections built into law enforcement and criminal justice procedure, things like needing a warrant to search a home, needing “probable cause,” to arrest someone, or right to an attorney, etc.
Of course, one of the most important principles of all is the legal principle “innocent until proven guilty.” This phrase does not appear explicitly in the U.S. Constitution. Like the right to privacy, it’s a principle derived from several constitutional protections: the 5th Amendment guarantees due process of law and protects against self-incrimination, the 6th Amendment guarantees a fair and speedy trial, an impartial jury, and the right to defense, and the14th Amendment extends due process protections to the states. The key Supreme Court case is Coffin v. United States (1895) in which the Court clearly affirmed that presumption of innocence is a fundamental principle of American law.
I mention all this because these treasured freedoms, many of which are not available in most countries and in some countries not at all, because they create both protection of independence and privacy and a challenge to instituting and maintaining security.
For example, how does law enforcement, at any level, track and apprehend domestic terrorists? Well, they do so by investigating and interviewing known associates or simply witnesses or neighbors, surveillance, searches, snitches, undercover officers, audio/visual recordings as in “Is he wearing a wire,” and review of online activity and financial or other personal information.
Now, law enforcement officers are not omniscient, nor clairvoyant, so they don’t know who is innocent or guilty. So, for them to investigate and track a bad guy, they must talk with, perhaps take into custody even if briefly, pressure—threaten—people with legal action against some unrelated issue, and maybe put this person, who is innocent of a crime, at personal risk.
Herein lies the rub: freedom vs security. If freedom is maximized, law enforcement can be curtailed, not able to learn what is necessary for finding and apprehending truly bad and dangerous actors. If security is maximized, law enforcement may, sometimes intentionally but often unintentionally, treat innocent citizens like criminals.
If you watch crime shows or movies on television, you see this conundrum played out regularly. Programs like the long-running Law and Order and its spinoffs, same for NCIS and its subsequent programs, older programs like Hawaii 5-O or The Closer, Rizzoli and Isles, even Blue Bloods, various detective programs, and newer programs like FBI, CIA, or Chicago PD.
In all these programs, sooner or later and usually quite often, this tension between freedom and security is played out in the plot. Sometimes, it’s the focus of the plot, meaning we watch the fav protagonist wrestle with his or her ethics in just how far are they willing to go, maybe a tad over the line, in jerking around the innocent parties, violating their rights, to catch the bad actor.
For some programs, like Chicago PD, this is a motif of the show, especially with the Intelligence Unit bossman, Sgt. Hank Voight, leading investigations into the city's most formidable offenses—drug trafficking, organized crime, high-profile murders and other large-scale felonies. He often crosses the line, even expecting his young officers to follow him, because his ethics are, shall we say, the ends justify the means. This is one of the reasons I no longer watch this program, at least not often, because for me, it’s too ruthless, too cop-vigilante. And it’s one reason, my wife and I always enjoyed Blue Bloods wherein this kind of thing happens from time to time in terms of realism, but for the most part this show’s motif is the Reagan family’s commitment to the law and integrity. In this sense alone, Blue Bloods and Chicago PD are dramatically different.
FBI is a good law enforcement drama with most of the action taking place in New York City. Several times, which is to say several episodes, have focused on Muslims, as innocent bystanders or victims, as domestic terrorists, as misunderstood and bullied people in the neighborhood, as FBI agents. At times, in my book the show can get a bit Woke preachy, lecturing me the viewer on how I should think better of Muslim citizens when they know nothing about my view of such folks. But I get what the show is doing and find the plots and action plausible and interesting, so I keep watching.
Just last evening we watched an FBI episode from four years ago in which one of the FBI agents, who in the storyline is a Middle Eastern American born and raised in the city, served his country in Afghanistan, and is now a respected agent, is put in the middle of freedom vs security. In this plot, two Muslim men turn out to indeed be domestic terrorists looking to blow up targets in the city, but the local mosque Imam—a friend of the Muslim FBI agent who has in the past worshipped at this mosque—does not know this and thinks the FBI focus on them is about discrimination and profiling. Meanwhile, another FBI agent pressures the Imam to the point of physical altercation, accuses him of lying, and threatens his and the mosque’s well-being with no legal basis for doing so—only this is leveraged to learn what the agent wants to learn. Then the Imam blames his friend Muslim FBI agent who is standing by, just doing his job, and trying to maintain some decorum.
So, the much of this episode’s story is about the angst and soul-searching the young American Muslim FBI agent experiences in the process of doing his work.
He knows there is risk and a need to take action in the interest of security.
He knows some local Muslims may have knowledge, but he holds back in the interest of protecting their freedoms, assuming innocence. Later in the program, he is called into his lead agent’s office and must answer for why he did what he did or did not do, what took him so long, and why was he—in the lead agent’s view—“overly concerned” with the freedom of a person of interest when such severe security concerns existed?
I’ve watched another FBI episode where again they plot turned on this Muslim agent’s conundrum as he is put in the middle of freedom vs security. In this instance some local Muslim people, who were all innocent in this case yet were “pinched” as they say in law enforcement, leveraged to get to the bad guys.
Almost two years ago, I produced two podcasts dealing with Digital Identification. I called them “Digital Identification in a Brave New World,” and “Digital Identification in the End Times.” I noted that we now live in a mass surveillance digital world. Likely, there is not a week goes by that you and I are not recorded somehow someway in what we view, read, purchase online, perhaps where we go.
Today, a track-and-trace society has begun rapidly developing on at least five levels:
1-Mass surveillance with CCTV cameras now located in public spaces in virtually every American city, making possible along with computers, a mass surveillance society.
2-Geo-location technology capable of tracking where we are if not what we are doing at any given moment.
3-Biometric technology, including fingerprints, facial recognition, etc.
4-Digital identification becoming the fundamental means of commerce and communication.
5-Digital banking and digital currency.
Living in a mass surveillance, track-and-trace society built on digital identification creates a persistent tension between freedom and security in a pluralistic democracy. On one hand, such systems promise efficiency, crime prevention, and public safety by allowing governments to monitor threats, manage public health, and streamline services. On the other hand, constant data collection can erode personal autonomy, chill free expression, and discourage dissent, as individuals may feel they are always being watched. In a free and open society that depends on diversity of thought and behavior, this can subtly reshape how people act, speak, and associate. The risk is not only misuse of data, but also normalization of surveillance as a condition of participation in civic life. Balancing these competing values becomes difficult: too much emphasis on security can undermine liberty, while too little may weaken collective safety, leaving societies navigating an uneasy and ongoing tradeoff.
Security suggests we want to live risk-free. But ironically, security risks our freedom.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best.
If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2026
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.