You are Being Watched

Here’s a post that I have been meaning to make for awhile, and since I have hijacked our England blog until Lauren gets back on Friday, this seems like a great time to write. One of the most surprising/disturbing things that we have noticed here are the incredible number of Closed Circuit TV cameras that line every street and public space in England. The BBC reports that the average citizen in the UK is caught on CCTV cameras 300 times a day. That’s got to mean that most of your waking hours you are being watched by some camera somewhere. England has by far the most cameras per capita of any country in the world, and it’s hard not to get nervous about so much state observation.

Cameras catch everything, and with thousands of them on motorways automatically snapping license plates and mailing tickets they seem to have replaced police in many instances. In 1996 CCTV accounted for more than three-quarters of total crime prevention spending. What has been unnerving as I looked up some articles on cameras is how little opposition there seems to be to them. There are a few independent sites contending that cameras are not the same as a human police officer, but in the standard press towns seem to be trying to out-do each other in their Big Brotherness with no mention of the huge reduction in personal privacy.

The next stage here is talking CCTV cameras, where operators watching a screen miles or even countries away can chastise people over intercoms. One forward-thinking town is actually using the system to monitor their main streets, and if anyone drops a piece of trash, the loud speakers kick in and they are properly taunted from above. If you have to read this to believe it, click here. I mean, make a few minor changes, and it might as well be a POW camp in the jungles of Cambodia. The striking part about the article is how there is no dissenting view offered, and these cameras are held up as the answer for crime. Where is the debate?

I understand that this is something that law enforcement thinks will give them an edge, and I’m sure it helps in prosecution, etc., but at what cost? Recording the lives of law-abiding citizens on this scale seems kinda totalitarian regime-ish and is certainly a slippery slope, as questions of who can use this information for what emerge. If you were at the right level in the government now, maybe you could read this through a window as I type it? Woah, that’s pretty scary. What are we DOING here??

Anyway, that is my “dark side” of modern English society for the night. Maybe we will start another blog about how England is becoming the world of 1984 to provide a forum for Brits to stand up to the man. Ehh, I doubt it though, we only have time for one blog, and this one sounds more fun. Until next time, hold on to your precious, precious FREEDOM!