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Surveillance technologies now available - including the monitoring of virtually all digital information - have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place.

Our border patrol does a great job under these very dangerous conditions. They use very sophisticated equipment, including gamma rays, to detect drugs and illegal immigrants as they enter the U.S.

Police in Washington D.C. are now using cameras to catch drivers who go through red lights. Many congressmen this week opposed the use of the red light cameras incorrectly assuming they were being used for surveillance at local brothels.

A security cam is one small part of a much larger universe of cams. The much larger effect, socially, politically and economically, is going to come from a much larger trend.

If you're in a motion-capture studio, you have spherical, reflective markers, which are picked up by cameras that emit infrared - it reflects it, and then the cameras pick up the data.

We need to know who's in the United States. We need to know everyone who's in the United States that comes in here from a foreign country. And we have to separate the ones who are dangerous from the ones who aren't. To accomplish that, we need a fence. We need a technological fence. We need a border patrol.

But my view is that you need a system at the border. You need some fencing but you need technology. You need boots on the ground. And then you need to have interior enforcement of our nation's immigration laws inside the country. And that means dealing with the employers who still consistently hire illegal labor.

Taking privacy cues from the federal government is - to say the least - ironic, considering today's Orwellian level of surveillance. At virtually any given time outside of one's own home, an American citizen can reasonably assume his movements and actions are being monitored by something, by somebody, somewhere.

When you go into a bar, there are hundreds and hundreds of cameras in that bar - many of them installed by that bar. They might be checking something or taking a picture of you.

Incidentally, our railroad facilities are under video surveillance by the federal police. However, the federal and state governments will have to determine whether video surveillance shouldn't be significantly expanded to a certain degree.