‘Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. ‘6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! That’s better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.’ (1984, by George Orwell)
I remember reading those words, and the description of the compulsory morning calisthenics, when I was about fifteen, and thinking that I would never live under such a State.
It’s a good thing that when I decided to leave South Africa, I didn’t choose Britain:
Britain is already one of the most watched nations on earth and now “talking” CCTV cameras are to be installed in 20 areas across the country.
The loudspeakers will allow CCTV operators to bark orders at people committing anti-social behaviour.
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According to recent studies, Britain has 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - which amounts to 20 per cent of the global camera total.It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.
Of course, this unbelievable travesty is receiving support from some of the Usual Suspects:
The world is a dangerous place. A heating globe threatens drought, war and mass migration. Terrorists may blow up proliferating nuclear power stations. Ministers are preparing for a 1918-style flu pandemic.
So on a scale of threats to Our Way of Life, where would you place CCTV and speed cameras, electronic health records, DNA storage or ID cards that carry the same information as passports? Most people are not in a delirium of alarm about the Big Brother potential of any of these. Mori finds that about 80% of people support the idea of ID cards (though only 39% think the government will introduce them smoothly, which is another matter). As for CCTV, when Mori asks local communities what would make their areas safer, street cameras always come in the top three. It’s easy to see why: people on an estate I know say CCTV helped transform the only local shopping street, which had been rife with drugs and prostitution.Most journalists know those green-ink letters from psychotics begging you to investigate dark forces who have inserted a chip into their skulls as they slept or put microphones in their walls. It is no use urging them to listen to their psychiatrists, or telling them this is a common delusion with a medical cause and sometimes a cure: they just accuse you of joining the great conspiracy. It takes a delusion of some grandeur to imagine that an all-seeing eye really cares what you are up to every minute of the day. But it’s one that seems to be shared by the vociferous campaigners against “the surveillance society”.
So sit back, exchange freedom for order, and oh, by the way, if you don’t do so, you’re insane.
I think it’s time for me to open up the old debate, purely as an intellectual exercise, of course:
What gun would best be used to disable a CCTV camera? Give your reasons and supporting arguments in Comments.
Of course, for our Brit friends, this could only be an intellectual exercise, because the freedom to be armed is one of the freedoms they’ve already exchanged for order—only it didn’t work.
And nor will this exchange, despite the soothing nostrums of statists like Polly Toynbee. Even one of her fellow-Guardianistas is appalled:
It is little appreciated that each generation must fight for its freedom and the freedom of its children in distinct ways. We have become complacent about our liberties as though they were in our blood, part of a gene pool of democratic virtues that very few other nations are fortunate enough to possess. But it is no exaggeration to say that among all western societies, Britain’s democracy is the most vulnerable from a kind of internal dissolution.
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It is difficult to think of anything more crass published in the pages of the Guardian during the last decade, for, of course, a surveillance society threatens all of us equally. To portray campaigners as precious middle-class tossers is an old Stalinist trick. To proclaim that individual liberty must be subservient to the demands of social justice betrays Toynbee’s bossy socialist roots. For, it is must be obvious to all but the old hardliners that liberty and social justice are not opposed to each other; indeed, that there can be no social justice without liberty.
My conclusion: it’s a little too late for you to start worrying about this now, old cock.
We in the United States need to start being aware of this nonsense, and we need to prevent it wherever we can. I’m quite aware of the fact that CCTV cameras are the darling of pricks like Hizzoner Richard Daley of Chicago, but I’d long ago written Chicago off as a lost cause.
For myself, I knew when I was fifteen that I would never live under such a State. Now, almost forty years later, my conviction is just as strong.
And you may interpret that comment any way you wish.
© Copyright 2001 - 2007 - Kim. All Rights Reserved.