The Surveillance Society

Two years ago the information commissioner, Richard Thomas warned that Britain was sleep-walking into a surveillance society. My thoughts at the time were that less walking into than already established, what with CCTV watching wherever we go and with every Tom Dick and Harry assuming the right to personal information sought with the now ubiquitous question “got any ID mate?” Yes, as it happens, I do, I’m just not giving it to you. Trouble is, such belligerence is becoming more difficult as the things we want to do and once took for granted are now excuses for demanding “ID” and to deny the request is to go without. Just try getting through the DSA’s driving instructor exams without having to show the same documents over and over, to the point of tedium. I mean, why would anyone want to go through the misery of that system fraudulently?

Anyway, Richard Thomas speaks again:

Fears that the UK would “sleep-walk into a surveillance society” have become a reality, the government’s information commissioner has said.

Richard Thomas, who said he raised concerns two years ago, spoke after research found people’s actions were increasingly being monitored.

Researchers highlight “dataveillance”, the use of credit card, mobile phone and loyalty card information, and CCTV.

Monitoring of work rates, travel and telecommunications is also rising.

There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain – about one for every 14 people.

Well, looks like he’s woken up from his sleepwalk… I resist as much as I am able by refusing to engage in surveys and loyalty schemes. I resist giving out information where I can, but it is, as I mentioned, becoming more difficult. This is, of course, part of the softening up process for the insidious identity card scheme the government plans to foist upon a largely willing populace. A populace that is seemingly unaware of the dangers. After all, the bad things will only happen to those who deserve it… won’t they? 

But just stop for a moment and think about what all this surveillance entails.

But surveillance ranges from US security agencies monitoring telecommunications traffic passing through Britain, to key stroke information used to gauge work rates and GPS information tracking company vehicles, the Report on the Surveillance Society says.

It predicts that by 2016 shoppers could be scanned as they enter stores, schools could bring in cards allowing parents to monitor what their children eat, and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk.

It all sounds a bit “Minority Report”, but the desire is already in place as I discussed yesterday. There are people both in the corporate world who want data to profile their sales pitch and in the public domain who want it for social engineering purposes. Then, of course, there’s the tired old justification of terrorism, that final fraudulent refuge of the malignant mountebank.

John Reid yesterday invoked the memory of Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the Dambusters’ raid “bouncing bomb”, and Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker, in appealing to British industry to encourage technical innovation in the “war against terror”.

It takes a certain gall to invoke technological heroes from our proud past to justify the tawdry fascism of ZANU Labour, but then, the bastards have shown that there is no depth to which they will not plumb in their attempts to justify their control freakery.

I digress. In the past decade, Britain has become the most spied upon nation in the “free” world. Yet no one seems appalled by this revelation. It isn’t Big Brother[sic] so no one notices. Sooner or later the proles will realise that Big Brother has an earlier reference, a more sinister meaning and that Room 101 isn’t just another television programme…

By then, it will be too late. Maybe it is already.

 On a more cheerful note; every so often you make a little discovery. Via Pete in Dunbar, A Neo-Jacobin from Courtney Hamilton. Jolly good egg.