George Orwell was right.

His timing was off, by a few decades. But 25 years after 1984, the year he predicted that government would be monitoring just about everything you were doing, the nightmare is rapidly coming true.

And what would make him more than a bit puzzled is that we don't really care. We're like the frog in the pot of water. The temperature has been turned up so gradually that we haven't noticed that our privacy is being boiled away.

The coming onslaught of "red-light cameras" ought to have citizens in allegedly liberal, freedom-loving Massachusetts seeing red. But I didn't hear a sound from civil libertarians last week when Gov. Deval Patrick urged the Legislature to give cities and towns authority to use them. Maybe that's because most of the civil libertarians are also in favor of government being big enough to supply all of our needs, and to do that, it needs more "diverse sources of revenue."

And don't think for a moment that this is about anything but money. A side benefit for government, however, is that those cameras will be watching you whether or not you run a red light. Sure, government may have no interest at the moment in what you're doing at any given intersection. But if it ever does, the infrastructure will be in place to watch you in yet another way.

And when that time comes, we'll all wonder how it happened. Well, this is how it happens.

It wasn't that long ago that liberals like Patrick and our legislators were foaming at the mouth about President Bush authorizing eavesdropping on communications between people in this country and known terrorists in other countries. They called it "spying on American citizens."

But they bring Big Brother in our own communities, a few more cameras at a time, and we yawn.

Perhaps that is because we're already awash in cameras, both private and public. You are on video dozens of times a day. Every time you fill your car with gas, there are cameras looking down on you. Every time you step into a bank, you're looking at a bank of cameras. At a major drug store outlet, I saw a little reminder on one of the shelves that "for your security," the whole place was being monitored by cameras. Same for the back parking lot of a restaurant where I ate recently. Same for toll booths, parking garages and stairwells in large buildings. Same for corridors in hotels. Same for schools. And on and on.

All for "your security," even though you didn't ask for it and it has nothing to do with your security — it has to do with the security of their property or products.

Perhaps it is because we all carry around cell phones, most of which include GPS. Perhaps we have suddenly bought into that old line, "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

But what if the government's definition of "wrong" becomes much more expansive?

Of course, the push for red-light cameras is draped with the mantle of "safety." But this has nothing to do with public safety. It has everything to do with taking more money from people without having to risk the political damage of raising taxes.

The safety argument isn't even credible. An increasing number of studies show that accidents have increased at those intersections. The Washington Post reported in 2005 that accidents increased by more than 100 percent at intersections with red-light cameras.

The reason should not be hard to figure out. Since drivers don't know if they can make it through a yellow light, they slam on their brakes, making it much more likely that another driver will hit them from behind, and possibly push them into the intersection.

Those cameras will simply make the current, utterly random, system even worse. Some yellow lights last all of three seconds, while others last nearly double that amount. At some intersections there is almost no delay between when the light in one direction turns red and the other turns green. At others, it can be several seconds.

Unpredictability creates uncertainty. And uncertainty is what causes accidents in many cases.

But, again, this is not about safety. It is about money.

It is also about Big Brother getting bigger. Sure, if you're driving the speed limit and don't run red lights, you've supposedly got nothing to worry about.

But that's how freedom is lost. The temperature just went up by another degree, and we aren't even noticing. All that remains is for an ever-more-intrusive government to decide that things that used to be OK are now wrong. By then, it will be much too late to do anything about it.

Taylor Armerding is associate editorial page editor of The Eagle-Tribune. He may be reached at 978-946-2213 or at tarmerding@eagletribune.com. Read him daily at The Soapbox, the Eagle-Tribune blog at blogs.eagletribune.com/soapbox