Under constant surveillance

Thank goodness I don't work in the UK nor aspire to spend any great duration of my life here in the future.... I think the endless plots to monitor every aspect of our lives is eroding my sense of privacy and well, making me feel disturbed - and angry more than anything. Its just so unnecessarily invasive!

Yesterday, I caught the bus back from London to my place of abode. I managed to grab the front seat on the upper deck of a double decker bus - something I like because you can't see the cars immediately in front of the bus so it always feels like you are lurching from one close shave to another (although for all I know, we actually are lurching from one close shave to another!). I must admit though, the only time I really though the upper deck of a double decker bus was brilliant when on a bus trip through the British countryside and I could see over the 6ft high hedges...

But I digress. I was quite contendly looking ahead at all the dingy buildings of inner London when I glanced at a grey pole and discovered I was eye-level with a camera. I looked around. I guessed it was to monitor for all those people who drive in bus lanes when they aren't supposed to (and at great cost as I discovered last month). If I had been at ground level, I would have thought this was just another street light - it was painted up and and everything to look like the surrounding street light posts. I glanced across the road and saw a corresponding grey box perched at street light height facing my way. I then counted about another 10 camera's in a 4 block radius, surveying for bus-lane offenders, traffic light runners and just pedestrian activity on the street below.

As we crawled forward in lunchtime traffic, we came across another double barrel camera near some traffic lights - more distinguished as it was on a white pole not the grey pole of street lights. I looked at the intersections where side streets joined the main road - two little white boxes were usually placed at the entrance of every street, one facing down the street, one facing the main road.

AAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!! Is it only me or is this really necessary??? Now my every movement into any side street is being recorded?????? To me this is unnecessary and invasive monitoring!

I am only slightly mollified - yet horrified - to learn this week that London has the highest crime rate in Europe, despite the highest number of CCTV's in the world (I mean, the density must be in the order of 1 every 50m...) AND the death toll from car accidents caused by speeding has risen not fallen in the last 2 years as camera's have replaced police on the street and sulking behind trees with radar guns. What does this tell you???? To me, it rather suggests that all this CCTV is doing nothing to deter crime and the excess of camera's on the road mean people have become so complacent about them, that they just go about their lives as if they don't exist - which is no doubt what we are supposed to do. Thus if a fine appears anomalously 2 weeks later in the post, they either pay it or contest it. But you have to face it - for crime and road death tolls to be rising - camera's are clearly just not as effective has having a siren wail into existance behind you, lights flashing and a dark-suit clad police officer knocking on your window and asking for a drivers licence and some paperwork or being pursued down a street by a squadron of fully armed police.

But it doesn't stop there. The police want to install camera's in buses and private company vehichles (eg couriers, post office vehicles) to record traffic violaters as the bus/courier/business people go about driving. This has set up a cry from the overworked automobile organisations, vexed that this is just a money making gambit from the police...

...the papers are also buzzing with the fact over 1 million people have signed a petition to try and stop the government from launching a new program to monitor EVERY car in the UK by satellite and hit them with congestion charges when they enter congestion zones around cities. Apparently it is pretty unprecedented in the UK for so many people to protest such action, but the government is pushing ahead, claiming it is 'good for the environment' and the campaign which showed how people could protest was 'flawed' and if people realised that this wasn't "Big Brother" at all but good for the environment, then everyone would withdraw their protest. Rubbish, I say (and I suspect the over 1 million people who signed the petition)! This is about protesting yet another invasive form of monitoring our every activity AND (probably more importantly) leveraging yet another fee for transporting ourselves from A to B in a country which already has the highest fuel tax in Europe and the highest train prices in the world! But when does the monitoring stop? I feel like a criminal whose allowed out on bail as long as I wear a monitoring device around my ankle. Yes, I am crime free, but I am very aggrevated about my privacy being monitored so publically!

But I can't rest yet - the council's now want to install microchips in household bins to weigh the rubbish as the rubbish collectors pick it up so they can charge us more for not recycling - and this with barely adequate recylcing provisions in place. Since everyone is already paying the council tax to pick up their rubbish, why do they now have to be charged more to pick up stuff which wasn't recycled?

And my final bit of angst was reading how German and English companies are trying to develop a finger-nail sized camera which can be embedded in every seat on an aeroplane to monitor our every tick, blink and whisper to try and detect if a terrorist is going to suddenly spring into action and do something destructive. This isn't just about safety anymore, this is getting damn invasive and personal! Using fear, to try and get us to submit to an omnipotent body of government officials watching over our every move and trying to second guess us.

The only shining light this week was first the company(s) developing the security chip for the passports politely informing the government the chip was onl covered under warranty for 2 years - not the 10 years of a passport (and how inconvenient would it be if the chip failed while you were traveling???). This caused a lot of blustering from the government about that being unacceptable. "Bite it," replied the I.T. companies. And it was nice of the political oppostion to remind computer companies supposedly in charge of developing the idenity card that the current government wants (but can't justify) that should they come into power, since they are firmly opposed to the identity card, and they will end contracts to develop said identity card... When the I.T. companies "on a platform of impartiality" protested and said the government simply didn't understand contracts with private companies, the oppositions responded that they were all to aware of the problems of contracts with private companies (see example at start of paragraph) I can but hope the opposition, if they come to power, do something more than protesting the identity card to giving back people a society where they aren't constantly being monitored.

No wonder movies like V, Equilibrium and Children of Men are all based in the UK - I have not been anywhere else on the planet where our rights are so constantly being violated - and taxed - in the name of fear (be it fear of the climate catastrophically changing in the next 50 years or terrorist). And I am glad to see newspapers, organisations and indiviuals alike all rising to tell the government to stop taxing and monitoring their lives!

PS: In case you don't check the comments below this post, here is an interesting link posted by one reader worth checking out - thank you!