Unpopular prediction: The US of the future is going to look a lot like what we would currently consider a "surveillance state" than it does now, and on the whole that's going to be okay.
I think "Transparent Society" has the right idea; these technologies are ubiquitous and cheap, and the question of the near future isn't going to be whether they're deployed but who controls the feed. If we pretend the answer can be made to be "nobody," we're dodging the conversation that needs to be had.
That's a very good question. What should we do in a future where one's sexual orientation could be outed by a government camera picking up a homosexual kiss behind a corner... Or by a private store security camera and a store owner who's an anti-homosexuality fundamentalist?
"Ban cameras" isn't going to cut it, because if you make it an issue of either-or, society's definitely going to choose stores being able to protect themselves over the relatively low risk of occasional homosexual outing. So we need a better approach than "ban cameras" (maybe the store owner is fined for sharing private information unredacted that's unrelated to a store security issue? Or we find out that that sort of thing happens all the time, so maybe homosexuality isn't a horrible society-destroying perversion that ignorant people were assuming it is?).
No, they are being to taught to hide their activities from the surveillance state, you think the teenagers in high school in their angst phase are going to accept it? Hah.
