Originally Posted by
SATTSO
And reporting the suspicious (and even the unusual) says nothing about conformity.
Oh, yes it does. If I get hassled every time I do something "unusual", even if it turns out that I'm completely justified in my actions, eventually I'm going to wear down and stop acting unusual so that I don't have to waste my time and energy (and perhaps money) defending myself against irrational charges. Voila: conformity.
It's what Jeremy Bentham called the "
panopticon". And it's a dangerous idea.