LOOK WHO'S WATCHING At the Audi Pavilion

As you're reading this article, stop for a moment and take a look around. Someone's keeping an eye on you (no, I'm not talking about that guy, but you might want to keep your eye on him just the same). I'm talking about the cold and constant "eye" of the surveillance camera.

There are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras currently in use across the U.S., ever vigilant and ready to snag red-light runners and fitting-room shoplifters, as well as provide both home security and homeland security. The beyond-Orwellian voyeuristic eye of the surveillance camera is all-seeing. Automated, omnipresent, emotionless cinema verite.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on who you ask. If you ask Adam Rifkin, the writer and director of LOOK, he'll tell you that it's just a true thing and leave any further reflection to you. Rifkin was on hand Thursday at the Audi Pavilion, along with LOOK co-producers Brad Wyman and Barry Schuller, for a special panel discussion on the film.

Presented by The Creative Coalition and Liberated Artists and moderated by MSNBC senior political analyst and West Wing writer Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., the panel also included Jeffrey Marquart, executive VP of Gavin de Becker & Associates; Peter Eliasburg, of the ACLU; and actors Tim Daly, Richard Schiff and Ernie Hudson.

Like the majority of us, Rifkin says he never gave much thought to those invisible eyes trained on society until he received a digital photograph in the mail -- it was from the City of Los Angeles and it was a picture of himself running a red light accompanied by a ticket.

"That was what planted the seed in my mind and I started paying attention to where cameras were. I quickly realized that they are really everywhere," Rifkin said. "As I started thinking more about it, I got the idea to tell a story completely from the perspective of surveillance cameras."

When Wyman and Schuller saw the script, they both were immediately fascinated with the idea and it was game on. Shot entirely from the point of view of the security cameras, LOOK reveals the things people do -- sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying -- when they don't know they're being watched.

But it is that idea of not knowing when and where and by whom we're being watched that raises some of the film's more troubling questions. There are some who argue that the added layer of safety and security that surveillance saturation brings to society easily offsets any privacy/ethical concerns.

Peter Eliasburg, general counsel of the Southern California ACLU disagrees.

"There seems to be an implicit sense that there is a tradeoff that is somehow worth it," The truth is there there is very little empirical evidence that this stuff helps," he said. "Police departments, for example, are rushing to buy the latest surveillance technology, but there really is no evidence that this is money well spent when it comes to security or public safety."

Whether or not that tradeoff is worth it, Rifkin leaves for audiences to decide.

"I am really not trying to make a statement, just trying to present the debate," Rifkin says. "Where the debate is going, I can't say, but the conversation is what I wanted to get started."