Who exactly is watching you?

Posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 by Home Office Watch
Category: Surveillance

Britain’s the most watched country in the world, with more CCTV cameras per person than anyone else. That CCTV is hopelessly inadequately regulated - you don’t even have to have any qualifications or background checks to be an operator, and there are few restrictions on who gets access to images and what they can do with them.

So it’s rather alarming, to say the least, to read that 19 out of 20 CCTV systems don’t even comply with the piffling rules there are in place.

Personally, I can’t wait until the ID cards programme gives the government a high-resolution photograph of each and every one of us, facial recognition technology improves so people can be picked out from moving CCTV, and cameras are installed at eye-height in lamp posts to get a clear shot.

Sound like a fantasy?

Tell that to the Information Commissioner, who suggested such systems could be routine by 2016 in his report on the Surveillance Society:

34.3. CCTV is also less noticeable. Smaller cameras are embedded in lampposts at eyelevel and walls, which allow the more efficient operation of the now universal facial
recognition systems. Morphing software which combines images from multiple
cameras to build a 3-dimensional picture is also being pioneered, although
campaigners and lawyers argue it is inaccurate and not a ‘real’ image.

34.4. It is not just the cameras themselves. Almost universal wireless networking
allows the cameras to be freed from bulky boxes and wires. In addition, the cameras
are linked to intelligent street lighting which provides ‘ideal’ lighting conditions for
recognition software, and also movement activated floodlighting and extra cameras
in the case of crowd ‘clumping’ or unusual movement.

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Comments: There have been 2 comments to this post.

  1. Tristan Mills Says:
    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:57 pm

    I had an idea a while back to use Google Maps or Google Earth to mark CCTV cameras in use in the UK along with photos and details of who is responsible for them.

    It would have be a collaborative project with public input.

    Thinking about it, it should be too difficult to build a webapp to handle requests of information and new information (along with updates etc) and the database back end should be fairly simple too.

    I think MySociety were doing something along these lines, but it doesn’t seem to have progressed very far…

  2. Tarkwin Says:
    October 2nd, 2007 at 2:40 pm

    remember the phrase “kill them all, let God sort them out”…

    A more modern incarnation should be “Film them all, let the courts sort them out”.

    We are being filmed, not as once suggested “to reduce crime”, but just in case we are committing crime. This is now a trustless Orwellian society. There are few things that each citizen is guaranteed, and these are getting fewer each day.

    Democracy is a myth, regardless of the method of election, the wishes of the public (remember them? they voted you into your seat) are rarely garnered and never considered when ‘the party line’ is followed.

    The contempt that politicians hold us mere mortals in is amply displayed by those in control of both sides of the Atlantic. Our Glorius Leader(s) dismissing suggestions that maybe we could have referenda - don’t be daft how can we be trusted to vote the way he wants us to. As for George W. Bush dismissing the Constitution as a ‘piece of paper’, words fail me.

    Oh and before you start feeling smug, ALL politicians are the same, the only difference is the colour of the rosette.

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