Oddities of my brain; Video Witnesses

I was very fascinated with the lengthy discussion in the book about the repression antics, sexual abuse, and testimonies. The idea of repression is quite an interesting one. The act of consciously blocking a memory from surfacing would seem like a feasible act, at least to me. I, as I'm sure many of you have realized, have quite a strange working brain that is obviously stretched to its limits from an overload of responsibilities and a severe lack of sleep. I often find myself repressing memories and thoughts that I do not like or make me feel uncomfortable. I am able to stop a memory or feelings in its track, preventing it from surfacing and blocking that period of time from my memory. 

The research that the book was proposing though about how traumatic events cannot be repressed made me stop and think for a second. I had to look back in my mind at previous attempts I had made to repressed more traumatic events and the success rate I had with it. I realized that, like the textbook had said, it's not really possible to totally repress traumatic events. What happened with me was that my mind was confused. It knew that something had happened, sometimes even what, but because of my repression attempts, I was confused on the validity of what had happened. I couldn't and can't be sure if what I was remembering had actually happened. This was different from the less traumatic events that I can totally erase from my conscious memory. 

Thinking about my own mind, as unusual as I think it might be, made me think about others, specifically the thoughts of witnesses used in court cases. If I could so easily manipulate my own mind and displace and even place memories, could others as well? What would this mean in a murder trial? Could a memory of the murderer be a figment of someone's imagination, manipulated into their mind? Or would it be possible that an accomplice repressed, or erased per se, the memories that would incriminate his friend. I've long maintained that the best liar is one who can lie to himself, for if he is lying to himself, it's not a lie he's saying, but the truth. That is, the lie he is saying is what he believes is true and it is therefore not a lie to him. This would allow someone to "beat" a lie detector and honestly swear to tell the truth in court. It made me think, should we continue to have eyewitness accounts allowed in court. 

An underlying theme of Skyfall, the latest James Bond film, is the modern debate of human agents versus technology. Q, the tech head, says that "I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field...[But] every now and then a trigger needs to be pulled." His message was that the rest of intelligence can be done through the latest technology with minor support from actual agents. The antagonist of the film, Silva, upon bringing Bond to his base, says that if Bond wants to do anything, be it steal billions from a stock market or take out a country, he just needs to click the button. Why can evidence and court cases not be the same. London has over 10,000 cameras watching its streets as part of an over invested attempt at having "eyes at every corner." Although the project was said to have been a fail, the cameras still track all. Across our country as well we have cameras constantly monitoring us. Every ATM, grocery store, and even school has cameras trained on our every movement, watching all of our actions. Why can we not just use those as the testimony? The video footage is far more reliable than human memory and cannot be changed.