George Orwell Was Right: Spy Cameras See Britons' Every Move

sanctus

The Padre
Oct 27, 2006
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Ontario
www.poetrypoem.com
By Nick Allen
Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- It's Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as Freshers' Week.
One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a disembodied voice booms out from above:
``You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!'' The confused student obeys as his friends look bewildered.
``People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,'' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.
Almost 70 years after George Orwell created the all-seeing dictator Big Brother in the novel ``1984,'' Britons are being watched as never before. About 4.2 million spy cameras film each citizen 300 times a day, and police have built the world's largest DNA database. Prime Minister Tony Blair said all Britons should carry biometric identification cards to help fight the war on terror.
``Nowhere else in the free world is this happening,'' said Helena Kennedy, a human rights lawyer who also is a member of the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. ``The American public would find such inroads into civil liberties wholly unacceptable.''
During the past decade, the government has spent 500 million pounds ($1 billion) on spy cameras and now has one for every 14 citizens, according to a September report prepared for Information Commissioner Richard Thomas by the Surveillance Studies Network, a panel of U.K. academics.
Who's In Charge?
At a single road junction in the London borough of Hammersmith, there are 29 cameras run by police, government, private companies and transport agencies. Police officers are even trying out video cameras mounted on their heads.
``We've got to stand back and see where technology is taking us,'' said Thomas, whose job is to protect people's privacy. ``Humans must dictate our future, not machines.''
Blair said citizens have to sacrifice some freedoms to fight terrorism, illegal immigration and identity fraud.
``We have a modern world that we are living in, with new and different types of crime,'' Blair said Nov. 6 at a press conference in London. ``If we don't use technology in order to combat it, then we won't be fighting crime effectively.''
Constant Monitoring
In the bowels of New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the London police force, a windowless room contains a giant bank of TV screens where the city is monitored around the clock. At the touch of a button, officers can focus on any neighborhood and zoom in on people's faces.
Police hunting the killer of five prostitutes in Suffolk were able to gather 10,000 hours of footage from in and around Ipswich.
By 2016, there will be cameras using facial recognition technology embedded in lampposts, according to the Surveillance Studies report. Unmanned spy planes will monitor the movements of citizens, while criminals and the elderly will be implanted with microchips to track their movements, the report says.
``The level of surveillance in this country should shock people,'' said David Murakami Wood, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle who headed the study. ``It is infiltrating everything we do.''
Wood is also concerned about the U.K.'s growing DNA database. The files contain the genetic codes of more than 3.8 million people, or 5.2 percent of the population. By comparison, the U.S. has the DNA records of 0.5 percent of its residents.
DNA matches helped solve 45,000 crimes in the U.K. last year, including 422 murders, 645 rapes and 9,000 burglaries, according to the Home Office. But the database isn't foolproof.
Burglar Who Wasn't
Police who knocked on Raymond Easton's door in Swindon, England, in 1999 were certain he had committed burglary at a house 200 miles (300 kilometers) away. DNA found at the scene was a 37 million-to-1 match with Easton's sample, which had been taken three years earlier.
Easton, a former construction worker, had Parkinson's disease and could barely dress himself. He was still charged. Further tests proved he had never been to Bolton, where the burglary occurred, according to the Greater Manchester police.
``Britain's DNA database is spiraling out of control,'' said Helen Wallace, deputy director of GeneWatch U.K., which campaigns for responsible use of genetic science. ``It could allow an unprecedented level of government surveillance.''
Other government plans include loading the confidential medical records of 50 million patients in the state-run health system onto a central database without their consent.
Most controversial of all are Blair's biometric ID cards linked to a national register holding every citizen's fingerprints, iris or face scan. Starting in 2010, anyone renewing or applying for a passport will have to get one.
``Desperate for some sort of legacy, the prime minister has nothing to offer but Blair's Big Brother Britain,'' said Phil Booth, national coordinator of the anti-ID card group NO2ID.
 

Colpy

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 5, 2005
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Saint John, N.B.
Yeah.

Great Britain has been slipping down this slope for quite some time..............it is a shame, and a disgrace.
 

I think not

Hall of Fame Member
Apr 12, 2005
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The Evil Empire
This is precisely what we have to be careful with. Our governments are going haywire and are ready to sacrifice liberties for the sake of "security".
 

Gonzo

Electoral Member
Dec 5, 2004
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Was Victoria, now Ottawa
Governments love it when people are scared. They use that as an excuse to trample on freedom and privacy in the name of "security". Has phone tapping ever stopped a terrorist attack?
I sometimes think that camera surveillance is okay if it catches, or stops, gang violence. We could use surveillance cameras at Ottawa bus stations.
 

cortex

Electoral Member
Aug 3, 2006
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hopelessly entagled
Its deeper than that. The english world view ---is just that a WORLD view. If we apply the French structuralist-anthropolgical analysis I think what we find deep in the brain of policy makers in the uk( and elsewhere) a compulsive desire to order and account for all persons ( ie dna biometric info) all property ( western property rights were pioneered here) and eventually all thought---ie as monty pythons satirically put it--- " all RIGHT thinking people".
All this however is done slowly and inoffensively--for ones good even---not in the overt totalitarian way. There is an assumption here that the WORLD should be accounted for by the state--and despite what they say the legitmacy or rather the pseudolegitimacy of this is the monarch's right to rule absolutely as an agent with devine grounding that with sword and quill and camaras oversees the clan---its all very tribal. . I believe we shall see an ever shrinking domain of private space there and here---

I'm sure the agencie(s) intercepting this internet communication would agree---wouldnt you?
 

Canadian_Ambassador

New Member
Dec 12, 2006
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This is like installing metal detectors in schools to prevent school shootings, yet if you look back at some of the most famous cases of school shootings, like the one recently in Montreal or Columbine, they both started OUTSIDE the school.

It's complete crap. I don't expect the government to prevent every terrorist attack and I'd rather the occasional terrorist attack, if it meant keeping my civil liberties. People die everyday from numerous different causes and terrorism is one of the most rare ways to die, yet we focus on it like it's the greatest threat to our country.
 

gopher

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 26, 2005
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Cameras may seem like a threat, but they can often be a friend. Here in the States cameras have been used as a check against police abuses of minorities in traffic situations or arrests. Rodney King got some justice after the terrible torment he was subjected to. Others have also benefited and society is safer for it.