Is This Eavesdropping?

I was at the gym last Tuesday. In the men's changing room, there was guard wandering around the room. But there's something I do not understand. Why would he be there? Is he trying to look at people changing clothes like if there is nothing to do? Is it to try finding something worthwhile to listen so that it might interest him?

I wonder, if his real purpose is to make sure that there might be no attempts for somebody to steal something and run away with it, how much is the probability of a stealing incident to happen? I don't really think such incident will happen. After all, people do bring their padlocks, don't they?

That's the guard that watches everybody like if he's ready to meddle into something. Seeing this brings me back to the schooldays. Prefects around, getting students to assembly, going for crowd control, or even become the greeters of big guests coming to schools. There were times that they would meddle in a conversation between two people. That's something I wasn't comfortable at that time. Busybodies.

Eavesdropping on someone isn't nice, as what the common social ethics dictate. However, in mission 5 of Thief 2, our good friend Garrett, in a way of finding the person responsible in ordering a hit on him had to rely on one source that might help him - to go to the Mechanist seminary in Eastport at midnight. During that time, Sheriff Gorman Truart, the man who really wanted to bump Garrett off was seem to be meeting someone, maybe the paymaster or something.
With the kind of surveillance technology available in the world, it would be devastating if it is misused by the powers-to-be. For instance, as part of the Patriot Act 2002, the CIA or even the FBI had the right to eavesdrop on conversations of every private citizen in the U.S alone, even if it is a friendly conversation between your neighbor or your relative. The moment if a conversation generates a frequent number of keywords such as bomb, and words including in the terrorist vocabulary, the might act to stop you. The U.S government is starting to become some sort of an Orwellian machine, a bureaucratic type. No one is safe from anything. People who watch the Will Smith movie, Enemy of The State will understand such concept of being pursued in such scenario, despite you being innocent.

People's privacy will be destroyed in the process if this such thing is misused. But they should not be afraid of the governments. Governments should be afraid of them. After all, normal people pick them, and they are expected to do the job that they promised to the people. If you don't do it, you're in trouble or breaking their promises.