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Orwell Cometh: A Look Inside the Surveillance Society
From security cameras to DNA databases, Big Brother is watching you.
Is England a police state? It’s hard not to think so given that the nation’s public spaces brim with 4.2 million surveillance cameras. Indeed, the United Kingdom seems an extreme case. They use 20 percent of the world’s closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras but monitor only one percent of its population.
Journalist Ross Clark, in his newly released The Road to Big Brother: One Man’s Struggle Against the Surveillance Society, does his best to describe what is going on across the pond. Central to his work are the questions: “How did we get to this position, where everything we do seems to be watched by the state? Did we ask for it, do we want it? Or has it just crept up on us?” American conservatives now pose the same questions regarding the federocracy, a gargantuan apparatus that burns through individual liberties in the manner a tractor does gasoline. Mr. Clark speaks not only of a phenomenon that afflicts his homeland, but ours as well.
Previously, Mr. Clark authored How to Label a Goat: The Silly Rules and Regulations That Are Strangling Britain and The Great Before: A Satire. In the past, Mr. Clark has written for the Times, the Sunday Telegraph, the Spectator, and the Mail on Sunday.
BC: I’m happy to report that I just completed reading your new book, The Road to Big Brother: One Man’s Struggle Against the Surveillance Society. In the text, you refer to England as one big Panopticon. For those unfamiliar with the term, to what are you referring? Also, what relevance does the word have to the modern nanny state?
Ross Clark: The Panopticon was a prison designed by early 19th-century lawyer Jeremy Bentham to give prisoners the illusion that they were being constantly watched. Each cell had a window facing onto a central tower fitted with blinds which allowed the gaoler to see in but not the prisoner to look out — it would not be designed with one-way glass. Bentham’s theory was that it would improve discipline as well as cutting costs: the prisoner could not tell when he was being watched and therefore must behave as if he were being watched all the time. The British government was initially impressed and sought to build a prison to Bentham’s design, but then pulled the plug on the project. The principle, however, has been put into practice through CCTV systems: we can’t be sure whether anyone is watching us via CCTV cameras, so in theory they should act as a constant deterrent.
BC: The law of unintended consequences applies to every endeavor, but have the 4.2 million cameras surveying England resulted in less crime? You mention the concept of crime displacement; is that something we’re now witnessing?
Ross Clark: Impressive claims are often made by police and other authorities about reductions in crime after cameras have been installed. There has also been serious criticism of these claims by criminologists: it is no use celebrating a reduction in crime directly beneath a camera if a few hundred yards away in a spot not covered by cameras crime has increased. Given that it is improbable authorities could ever cover every square inch of public space with CCTV cameras, the problem of crime displacement will always be there.
That aside, there are two questions here, I think: firstly, do CCTV cameras deter people from committing crime and, secondly, do they help solve crime after it has been committed? On the deterrence question there was an interesting study into CCTV cameras conducted by the University of Cardiff back in the late 1990s: when there was still such a thing as a British town without CCTV cameras, a study was conducted by the University of Cardiff into town center brawls, comparing the situation in towns with cameras to that in towns without them. The conclusion was that the CCTV cameras acted as no deterrent whatsoever: drunken men were just as likely to start a fight knowing they were in full view of the cameras. The only difference was that where cameras were present the police arrived more quickly, so reducing the severity of the injuries. In other words the cameras improved the effectiveness of police resources, but there was no Panopticon effect: the presence of cameras did not make people behave.
As for solving crime, sometimes the CCTVs help. But according to the government’s own figures four out of five images requested by the police or the courts turn out to be of no use whatsoever, either because the camera was pointing the wrong way or wasn’t focused, or because the image was too grainy. And of course, seasoned criminals know how to dress for the cameras: the hoody top, so beloved by British youths, is a kind of evolutionary response to CCTVs.
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Bernard Chapin wrote Women: Theory and Practice and Escape from Gangsta Island, along with a series of videos called Chapin’s Inferno. You can contact him at veritaseducation@gmail.com.
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20 Comments
1. whataloadacrap08:It’s almost to the point where Big Brother knows how many times you fart before lunch these days! With cable Internet, TV and radio your “online” habits are easy enough to document. With GPS in your car your location is easy enough to pinpoint. With credit and/or store cards your buying habits can be studied. Now they want to implant a chip into everyones arse with your complete medical history there for all to see.
May 21, 2009 - 11:52 pm 2. anton:And they still can’t keep track of the thousands of terrorists that are in the UK. I guess they just need more cameras. And more/better ID cards, maybe a GPS tag on everybody’s ear.
What a way to live.
May 22, 2009 - 6:10 am 3. Brian Richard Allen:The point, it seems, of all of this, is that most of what not so long ago was fairly accurately described as — and called itself — The Free World” and which included those very few countries in which the stupendous superiority of the benefits of being a part of Judeo-Christian/Western/Human Civilization were celebrated — and jealously guarded — were indeed free.
What has quite recently occurred, though, in such places as Washington DC and Canberra ACT, in Ottawa and at Westminster, in part because of the negative influences of unassimilable third-world migration and as the dead and decadent Euro-peons’ Neo-Soviet’s Triffids — merged with those from long long long latently-fascistic Berlin — blow in on the breezes from Brussels and from Strasbourg – is that, by a process of degeneration (in which evolution has been gotten rid of and/or has been reversed) an entirely new and essentially fascistic sub-species, essentially a Permanently-Parasitical Bureaucratic Class(less) has devolved.
That fascistic sub-species — now well into its fourth and fifth and sixth generation of control of the macinery of government — suffers endemically from a mental derangement whose effect includes a state of pathologically-denied personal inferiority that manifests in its sufferer’s deluded perception of the moral and intellectual inferiority of everyone who is not a member of his sub-species. Couple that with that when reality very very occasionally intrudes into the tiny worlds inhabited by the sufferers of that derangement, its effect is to fuel its every sufferer’s latent Paranoia.
And it is that Paranoia, institutionalized by the increasingly self-anointed, self-appointed, self-perpetuating and permanently-parasitical ruling elite that works so assiduously and so very insidiously to maintain its sufferers’ delusionally-fantasized elitist superiority over all of the rest of us mere mortals.
And to keep an authoritarian’s ear and a totalitarian’s eye on us all.
Hence the Statists’ ever growing network of the machinery of state surveillance
All of it — and this is especially so in ever-increasingly totalitarian Australia and in ever-more fascistic America — without there ever having been a single bill introduced and/or piece of legislation passed in either country, to permit the creation of the obscenely expensive and intrusive state information-gathering apparatuses.
And no-one, it seems, ever asks: Who and/or what gave the State the bloody authority?
Brian Richard Allen
May 22, 2009 - 6:37 am 4. Delia:Los Angeles Califobambicated 90028
And the Far Abroad
Robocop 2035!
May 22, 2009 - 11:39 am 5. JED:The US has already mandated the largest potential violation of privacy with the Medical Electronic Records passed in the $750 billion stimulus package. All of everyones’ once confidential medical records are available for data mining by our friendly fed. The potential of that information is enourmous and not always for patient benefits. One of the first criterion for rationing health care will be pre-existing condition. The rest is just personal.
May 22, 2009 - 11:40 am 6. Oscar Wao:Spyware is everywhere on the net. This PJM site has at least 6 adware and spyware gismos hooked on to your computer right now. What are they finding out about us? Who wants to know? Are they friendly?
You idiot. The Bush administration surveilled your every email. I’m sure you thanked him daily for it.
May 22, 2009 - 12:12 pm 7. Delia:5. JED
“This PJM site has at least 6 adware and spyware gismos hooked on to your computer right now.”
~
HUH? I have Kaspersky Internet Security 8 and any website with ad-ware/spyware pops up a warning form Kasp… Never, ever had that happen on PJM!
Do you have evidence of that? *gulp*
May 22, 2009 - 12:44 pm 8. JED:Delia:
May 23, 2009 - 7:48 am 9. Dave Goin:I have Webroot Spyware with Virus and if I go only to this site with before and after sweeps I pick up the same little bunch:questionmarket,specificclick,adrevolver,realmedia, and 9 other of the usual suspects. Webroots keeps them in quarantine with their found locations. I think of it as my own little Gitmo. Last month I hauled in 27 viruses, and those were from legitamate sites, not mail. Buggy eh?
Oscar, your lack of intelligence is showing.
Unless you were emailing some raghead outfit, slling dope or laundering money then they weren’t interested in, nor did they have the resources to read every email sent worldwide. They have a pretty good idea of what to look for and where to look for it. Flagged words and phrases would trigger a closer look and then get a warrant to fully investigate. They don’t have time for that.
Do you really believe GWB gives a rats Arse what pinheaded liberals are writing to each other. The Web is public and open to the world.
May 23, 2009 - 8:29 am 10. JIMV:If I don’t want anyone to listen in or read my mail then I speak in person or not at all.
[i]Is England a police state? It’s hard not to think so given that the nation’s public spaces brim with 4.2 million surveillance cameras.[/i]
Remember, the UK a few years ago changed the rules on double jeopardy letting the government to keep trying a person until they get the result they like and they banned almost all guns to reduce violent crime and gun crime, resulting in exactly what gun owners claim, a more than a doubling of the violent crime rate and an 80% increase in gun crimes. Freedom is long gone in the UK…look up their thought crime laws….shudder.
May 23, 2009 - 9:40 am 11. D. Grant Chee:The guvmint, in watching us, demands we watch them. County, state and federal bureaucrats are
May 23, 2009 - 3:34 pm 12. D. Grant Chee:granted authority to steal our privacy, place us on rosters and declare broad segments of (we the people) liabilities; while elected leaders exercise no authority to protect us.
ATTN Bureau-rats: We know who you are, where you are and what you have done and plan to do.
What you don’t know is that your misconduct and abuse of undeserved authority is your undoing.
We, tha sheepple, have big bro surrounded! Baa
May 23, 2009 - 3:41 pm 13. JED:Bhaaaa, baaaah baaaaaaaaaaaaahh
If you want to soar to new levels of paranoia, rent the movie “Eagle Eye”. The joke is on us, because we are paying for this security.
May 23, 2009 - 4:21 pm 14. Oscar Wao:“They have a pretty good idea of what to look for and where to look for it. Flagged words and phrases would trigger a closer look and then get a warrant to fully investigate. They don’t have time for that.”
I don’t understand the distinction you’re making. Here you are defending an article about surveillace. You do realize that the problem of surveillance isn’t that THEY ARE actively looking at you, its THAT AT ANY MOMENT THEY COULD BE. Some douchebag might read all or none of your emails. Its up to him. That’s the whole point of right to privacy–you don’t put that power in the hands of the government. I can’t believe I’m actually explaining this to somebody. God, I was prepared for some low IQs here, but I feel like I need an express elevator back up to the surface.
May 23, 2009 - 8:07 pm 15. Warren Bonesteel:If the truth were but known, neither party/ideology gives a rip about freedom. Their narrative and meme is about control. Your favorite and least favorite politicians are the problem. Hell, you elected them – and keep on re-electing them – so you’re a part of the problem.
Google: ‘Beyond Conspiracy: Police State America.’ There are numerous
references and resources at the first three links.
see also: ‘An Open Letter to American Politicians: On “Right-Wing Extremists”.
by Warren “Bones” Bonesteel’
see also: ‘Economic Depression, Civil Unrest and the breakdown of order in America.’
see also: ‘On Proper Government in a Republic.’
U.S. Constitution.
http://www.usconstitution.net/declar.html
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
State Constitutions
http://www.findlaw.com/11stategov/indexconst.html
Commentary and letters by Founding Fathers.
http://www.constitution.org/liberlib.htm http://oll.libertyfund.org/
Whether you realize it or not, you only have two choices left: Submit to tyranny or prepare to fertilize a certain metaphorical tree.
May 24, 2009 - 3:24 pm 16. Well Educated Cad:Who was it who said ” Those who would give up their freedom for security will soon have neither”? Jefferson? or Franklin?
May 24, 2009 - 7:04 pm 17. burntjohn:Google crawls the entire internet every couple of weeks and has recently started to keep track of who is linked to whom on social networks, blogs and just about every page they crawl. This new service is called Google Social Graph.
May 24, 2009 - 7:31 pm 18. wadosy:these invasions of privacy are wildly successful, which explains why the FBI has to manufacture its own terrorists, then bust them with weeks of 24/7 media hysteria.
despite all the data mining, they still cant find al qaeda.
…so it becomes necessary to ask ourselves: who’s the government really afraid of?
May 25, 2009 - 10:03 am 19. wadosy:nevermind.
the situation’s under control.
we manufacture terrorists, who are blamed for crimes we commit to justify our project, then torture our ersatz terrorists into confessing to our crimes.
it works like a charm… except for the dawning suspicion (in the general population) that the whole thing’s a crock…
…which explains why massive data mining is necessary.
.
May 25, 2009 - 10:08 am 20. Dblade:it’s the cold civil war, dont you know?
The problem though is that people aren’t honest and willing to accept more crime for less surveillence. The police are zero-sum, they can only do so much, so things like this are an effort to try and increase protection by supplementing it with mechanical means.
I mean, stores use cctv too, mostly because its impossible to afford a full-time detective team. If they didn’t, crime would increase, simply because there is less of a deterrent.
If you want small government, you have to accept the reduction in services it will bring. You can’t have both-if you want more freedom from observation, you have to accept the increase in crime it may bring.
May 25, 2009 - 10:33 pm