A July 23, 2009, article in Britain's Daily Express:

THOUSANDS of the worst families in England are to be put in "sin bins" in a bid to change their bad behaviour, Ed Balls announced yesterday.

The Children's Secretary set out L400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far.

But ministers want to target 20,000 more in the next two years, with each costing between L5,000 and L20,000 – a potential total bill of L400million.

Ministers hope the move will reduce the number of youngsters who get drawn into crime because of their chaotic family lives, as portrayed in Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless.

Sin bin projects operate in half of council areas already but Mr Balls wants every local authority to fund them.

He said: "This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem. There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support."

But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: "This is all much too little, much too late.

"This Government has been in power for more than a decade during which time anti-social behaviour, family breakdown and problems like alcohol abuse and truancy have just got worse and worse."

Mr Balls also said responsible parents who make sure their children behave in school will get new rights to complain about those who allow their children to disrupt lessons.

Pupils and their families will have to sign behaviour contracts known as Home School Agreements before the start of every year, which will set out parents' duties to ensure children behave and do their homework.

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagerness of his body merely emphasized the blue overalls which were the uniform of the Party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

[...]

Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig iron and the overfulfillment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you make was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing.

Meanwhile, in other news, the Obama administration has put out a nationwide request: "If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

What government on earth--or at least, what government that purports to head a free country--could ever countenance such a call? Even if the good people in the White House are completely aboveboard--even if this is the best-intentioned initiative imaginable (I do admit I find that hard to imagine), how in the world is that sort of wording going to do anything other than inspire fear, suspicion, and the worst censorious impulses?

I am reminded of a line drawn from another classic dystopian tale: In The Matrix, Morpheus introduces Neo to the truth of his decidedly unfree world with a key line: "Welcome the the desert of the real." That phrase, in turn, draws from an essay by French theorist Jean Baudrillard, whose thinking about the simulated, inauthentic character of contemporary life has long made him a favorite pet within academe.

Where are the academics now? Why aren't they challenging this stuff--hooking it up to the long history and philosophy of freedom, dissenting as a means of showing patriotism, charting with scholarly dedication this administration's frightening deviations from its own promises, not to mention the principles of liberty? I thought, when they turned that sort of intellectual critique on the Bush administration, that, as partisan as it was, it also bespoke a deeper commitment to intellectual and ethical integrity. I thought they saw themselves as guardians of some sort, as citizens with special obligations to parse Washington's ideas and place them in context.

Guess I was wrong.