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UK Has Become a "Surveillance Society"

Posted by Zonk on Sat Nov 04, 2006 02:28 PM
from the gotta-keep-us-safe-from-the-bogeyman dept.
Privacy Government Politics
cultrhetor writes "In a story released by the BBC, Richard Thomas, the information commissioner for Great Britain, says that fears of the nation's 'sleep-walk into a surveillance society' have become reality. Surveillance ranges from data monitoring (credit cards, mobiles, and loyalty card information), US security agencies monitoring telecommunications traffic, to key stroke logging at work. From the article, the report '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.' The report's co-author, Dr. David Murakami-Wood, told BBC News that, compared to other Western nations, Britain was the 'most surveilled country.' He goes on to note: 'We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us.'"
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[+] Technology: UK Taps 439,000 Phones, Now Wants To Monitor MPs 290 comments
JPMH writes "With the largest density of CCTV cameras in the world, and an increasing network of automatic number-plate recognition cameras on main roads, Britain has long been a pioneer for the surveillance society. Now new official figures reveal that UK agencies monitored 439,000 telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is seeking the right for agencies to be allowed to monitor the communications of Members of Parliament as well, something which has been forbidden since the 1960s. It must be that it is bringing their numbers down: on the law of averages they should be monitoring at least 5 of the MPs."
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  • That's a whole lot of cameras (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zarniwoop_Editor (791568) on Saturday November 04 2006, @02:31PM (#16718049) Homepage
    FTA
    There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain - about one for every 14 people.

    With that many cameras one can imagine it must be fairly difficult to venture out in public without being "ON CAMERA".
    I'm really not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand it might prevent some crime, on the other it certainly makes one feel like their privacy is in doubt. I guess it's only gonna be a real problem when they start installing them in your home.
    • It doesn't matter how many cameras there are. We all feel safe because we know that Chairman Blair would never abuse the power.
    • Cameras merely make a record so that it is possible that the criminal may be identified later.
      • Cameras merely make a record so that it is possible that the criminal may be identified later.

        It's the record that is the problem. How long is it kept? If you're running for office 20 years down the line or applying for a job, would you want it to come out that you were speeding at 100mph/kissing a person of the wrong race or gender/talking to someone who ended up being arrested for terrorist 5 years later/etc? If there's a sunset law on the footage, that anything not involved in a criminal investigati

      • Sooo, lemme summarize:

        1. You may not carry weapons or defend yourself properly.
        2. A criminal assaults you and if he's in a bad mood, he'll kill you, too.
        3. The police cleans up your body.
        4. The crime's on camera, but you're still dead.

        But, you say, criminals will be discouraged from committing crimes if they're monitored.

        First an observation: they're not monitoring criminals, they're monitoring you. And you aren't a criminal, so why are they monitoring you?

        1. Criminals commit crimes even if they're monitore
    • On the one hand it might prevent some crime, on the other it certainly makes one feel like their privacy is in doubt.

      Yeah, if there's one place I'm concerned about privacy, it's when I'm out in public.

      • When you find a way to survive without ever leaving the house, let us know.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mrogers (85392)

        Yeah, if there's one place I'm concerned about privacy, it's when I'm out in public.

        So you wouldn't mind if a masked man followed you everywhere, every day, from the moment you left your house to the moment you returned, and made regular and detailed reports about your activities to unspecified people? Because personally I'd feel extremely intimidated and invaded by that situation. Unfortunately it's easy to forget that you're being treated that way by CCTV, because the cameras are relatively unobtrusive.

        • So you wouldn't mind if a masked man followed you everywhere, every day, from the moment you left your house to the moment you returned, and made regular and detailed reports about your activities to unspecified people? Because personally I'd feel extremely intimidated and invaded by that situation. Unfortunately it's easy to forget that you're being treated that way by CCTV, because the cameras are relatively unobtrusive.

          People are only being treated that way by CCTV if they're doing something suspicious.

    • In large US cities, its the same way.

      Now currently they arent all interconnected, but it wouldnt be hard to take that 'extra step'.

      And it doesnt really prevent crime. thats just marketing to get you to accept the invasion. It might help to id the person that mugged you later, but they wont stop just because it might be recorded.
      • I believe that statistics show that in the UK the presence of CCTV does in fact reduce crime in the surveilled area. However, rather than prevent it entirely it merely displaces it to places which don't have CCTV.
    • I think the important point is that all this CCTV is generally owned and monitored by a *lot* of different organisations. Shops, clubs, pubs, malls etc all monitor there own little bit. True there are a police and council cameras too, but they are limited to a small % of coverage in city centres and traffic cameras on main commuter routes. So although if you wander around a city centre you're probably on camera most of the time, in practice the monitoring is so widely spread that it's difficult to say yo
    • Yeah it is, and it's a figure I've thought about a lot since I keep seeing it in the news. I don't believe it's the number of CCTV cameras covering public spaces, the traditional 'Big Brother' depiction. Just how many of this 4.2m are on private ground - in office buildings, pointing at warehouse entrances, in newsagents... not under the direct control of the police or the council. I think it's a fair proportion. Wish I could find some hard figures though.

  • Hey Fark! (Score:3, Funny)

    by ResidntGeek (772730) on Saturday November 04 2006, @02:36PM (#16718089) Journal
    Can we borrow your "obvious" tag?

  • Funny (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Threni (635302) on Saturday November 04 2006, @02:37PM (#16718101)
    It doesn't feel any different. I know we've solved quite a few 20+ year old crimes using DNA, and we found out quite a lot about the July 7th bombers from CCTV. A friend whose car was damaged in a hit and run incident a few months ago managed to find out which insurance company to claim against because of cameras on the road - that wouldn't have been possible if she's just hoped the guy had decided to turn himself in.

    Still, I'm sure there's a downside to this technology, otherwise why the fuck would people keep going on and on and on and on about it all the time, as if the presence of cameras somehow stops them from going about their lawful business.
    • I think that your viewpoint is pretty typical of people actually who are in the UK, I am and it doesn't really bother me. A lot of Americans (who will be modding you down right about now) cannot understand how anyone could be happy in this situation because they have a tradition of being suspicious of government and put the right to privacy above many other benifits which might come from this kind of thing...

      I'm not saying that any one view is better than another, although for my own part I think that i

      • Re:Funny (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Poppler (822173) on Saturday November 04 2006, @03:02PM (#16718321) Journal
        for my own part I think that it might help reduce crime by increasing the probability of getting caught and thus changing the pay-off matrix for the criminals
        It doesn't.
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2192911.stm [bbc.co.uk]
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/ 4294693.stm [bbc.co.uk]

        Of coarse, it's your country, and it's none of my business that you let your government monitor you. Just don't let them fool you into thinking it's useful for deterring crime. Violent crime in particular is often not a rational act; most criminals are not putting the risk and reward through an algorithm to determine whether or not they should commit the crime.

      • I think that your viewpoint is pretty typical of people actually who are in the UK, I am and it doesn't really bother me. A lot of Americans (who will be modding you down right about now) cannot understand how anyone could be happy in this situation because they have a tradition of being suspicious of government and put the right to privacy above many other benifits which might come from this kind of thing...

        And similarly, if you talk to many Chinese people you will discover many of them see nothing wro

          • OK Mr "Nothing to hide" What's your full name and address, how much do you earn and how much tax do you pay on it? Post all that here on slashdot please, after all you've nothing to hide, right?

            Also would you support mandatory CCTV and microphones placed in peoples houses; that'd make terrorist plots almost impossible to hatch at home, You won't mind a CCTV camera placed in your bathroom will you? You've got nothing to hide.
              • My location on the street etc is anyone's business who takes the effort to watch me.

                In that case I'll pay for a masked man with a digital video camera to follow you about 24hrs a day, recording you whilst you are out of your house.* After all that's effectively what CCTV cameras are, would you mind if I (as another citizen and resident of the UK) did that? How about if the government did that to everybody? would you mind then? Or is it the lack of a physical person and the ease with which we forget we are

          • The only downside that I can see is you have to put up with people whinging about a `surveillance society` without defining what that is, and what's wrong with it.

            "Surveillance Society" is defined in great detail in the report which led to the article which started this discussion: The Information Commissioner's "A Report on the Surveillance Society" [ico.gov.uk].

            In this context, surveillance is not just about cameras. They are not even the most important aspect. Unfortunately they are the most visually obvious sign

      • I'm not saying that any one view is better than another, although for my own part I think that it might help reduce crime by increasing the probability of getting caught and thus changing the pay-off matrix for the criminals

        Here's another way to look at it, which it doesn't seem like anyone has really considered..

        If the only way your populace obeys the law is because they know they might get caught.. what does that say about your society? What does a society really have to offer, that can only control it

    • No, the camers don't stop people going about their lawful business.

      On the other hand, Britain is (yet again) running out of space in its jails. So either the cameras are not having any effect on the crime rate, or else a lot of people are being imprisoned for trivial offences for which they would not have been imprisoned in the past. In the first case they are a waste of money, and in the second case they are having the effect of criminalizing a large proportion of the population.
    • we found out quite a lot about the July 7th bombers from CCTV

      The main evidence used to posthumously charge the 4 men was the Luton station still. This frame has been quite obviously photoshopped. I know I'll be modded into oblivion for questioning this but I feel I should point it out because it bothers me a great deal. The CCTV system of the bus that exploded in Tavistock Square was uncharacteristically not working that day too.

      http://www.julyseventh.co.uk/7-7-cctv-evidence.htm l [julyseventh.co.uk]

  • keylogging *shudder* (Score:3, Funny)

    by arun_s (877518) on Saturday November 04 2006, @02:38PM (#16718113) Homepage Journal
    key stroke information used to gauge work rates
    All characters in this post painstakingly copy-pasted using mouse :(
    God I hate draconian surveillance
  • A back to nature movement will rise up to smash all those cameras so people can walk around naked in public again.

  • The list of the countries (Score:3, Informative)

    by eMago (267564) on Saturday November 04 2006, @02:43PM (#16718157) Homepage
    The "privacy rating" list of the 36 countries mentionted in the article can be found here: http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2005 /phrtable.pdf [privacyinternational.org]

    As it seems, the quite bureaucratic Germany has learned from its history (three police states in a century: the Second Empire with the Prussian secret police, Nazi Germany with the GESTAPO/SD/SS and socialist Eastern Germany with the STASI), however privacy is eroding there nearly as quickly as anywhere else.

    Where will this (cultural?) trend in the western world lead to and where will it end? I think the older Germans know and perhaps some already prepare for the next autocracy/surveillance society.
  • Two appendices purport to give glimpses into life in britain in 2006 and 2016. The 2016 scenario reminds me of the later simulations in A Mind Forever Voyaging

    In residential areas, public area CCTV has almost entirely
    become Open-Circuit Television (OCTV). All under 18s are currently barred from
    entering or leaving the Estate from 6pm until 6am. For Sara, this means that to see
    her best friend, Aleesha, outside school hours, one of them has to risk an encounter
    with the estate's Community Wardens, who are armed

  • >Richard Thomas, the information commissioner for Great Britain, says that fears of the nation's 'sleep-walk into a surveillance society'

    That is not true. I heard his comments, both last year and this year.

    Last year he said

    "I think we are sleep-walk into a surveillance society"

    this year he said

    "We have sleep-walked into a surveillance society"

    He never said 'fear'

    He wants a debate as to whether or not this is something we want.

    Don't put words into his mouth to make your subjects sound interesting.

  • Terrorstorm DVD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LM741N (258038) on Saturday November 04 2006, @03:04PM (#16718343)
    Search Amazon for the Terrorstorm DVD by Alex Jones. One section of the video has some excellent pictures of the camera systems in use in Britain. On a more general note about the video, it is an excellent documentary about the rise in state sponsored terrorism. Last I checked it was #21 in popularity for Amazon DVD's. Alternatively, you can find it on Google video or at www.infowars.com.

  • Change (Score:3, Informative)

    by 42Penguins (861511) on Saturday November 04 2006, @03:05PM (#16718351)
    Why not try to make a change? Tomorrow is the 5th of November, after all.
  • that this all is very necessary to catch the bad guys and if you have nothing to hide, what's the problem?

    He's planning to move to America next year because he can't take the high taxes and cost of living anymore, among other things. I wonder if he ever connected the two. (Remember all those new surcharges to fly these days after 9/11 to pay for the federalization of the security workforce and multiply that throughout an entire society.)
    • he can't take the high taxes and cost of living anymore, among other things. I wonder if he ever connected the two


      In Germany they pay close to twice as much tax as Britain, yet the cost of living is considerably lower. What connection are you expecting him to make?

  • From the article:

    Have Your Say...
      If it prevents criminal behaviour or improves its detection I'm all for it.
    Mark Jones, Plymouth


  • This part of the article/summary caught my eye:

    ...and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk.

    I don't know if I'm helping to dismantle the vapid Orwellian scare tactics that the article has adopted or if I'm just adding to them by pointing this out. The work climate and employment laws in the U.K. may differ from those of the U.S., but in the United States, this already happens.

    The Americans With Disabilities Act proscribes discrimination against disabled Americans and imposes a bur

  • With Oceania allied with Eurasia we will be able to defeat Eastasia with ease! Quick, time for our two minutes of hate!
  • To defend against allegations that one's policies will lead eventually to an untenable moral outrage, it is not enough to call these arguments "a slippery slope." Some slopes are slippery. A better tactic is to argue that there are in fact boundaries to your proposals-- bright lines that cannot accidentally be crossed by the unwary.

    But this defense of surveillance does not give me any comfort.

    Graham Gerrard from the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said there were safeguards against the abuse of

  • Take that one step farther, and you might get denied purely due to your spending habits or your friends. "we dont approve of those books you buy" or "well, we see you have friends that live in the wrong side of town, and you visit them often"

    Dont forget insurance rates going up "we see you drive often in a higher crime area then you live, so we will be rasing your rate to compensate"
  • On the one side there is an outcry from some that this attacks the privacy and on the other side people are uploading their most shamefule pictures and moviemoments to show the world.

    One used to say: 'Give me freedom or give me death' Now people seem to say: 'I don't want to die, no matter how I am forced to live.'

    Oh well, I am off watching Big Brother.
  • "We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us."

    It's not often that the most excellent quote from the article is included in the /. summary of said article.

    BTW, WTF is a 'London Oyster Card'?!

  • You have nothing to fear. Look, I'm sure it's all fine and we can trust our overlords with unlimited power. It always works out well.
    • Remember, Remember the Fifth of November... It's that time of year.

      Ah yes, Guy (aka Guido) Fawkes [wikipedia.org], the only honest man to set foot in the Houses of Parliament... (He tried to blow them up in 1606.)

      -b.

    • Democracies do surveillance, perhaps more than they should or need.

      Dictatorships do censorship, political prosecution and incarceration, banning, executions opponents etc.

      So if you are being surveyed you can think of yourself as lucky.

      No. Dictatorships do both. The STASI, for example, had some of the most extensive files on E. Germany's citizens of any agency. Secondly, a surveillance society sets up a framework and a culture (we're used to being spied upon) that can easily and quickly be abused by a

      • You can even say that today, democracy is nothing more than a dictatorship where you can change the dictator in every four year. During that time you can't do anything against those who are in power. Unless they give up their power willingly you have to stage a revolution if you want a change. Simple protests are futile.

        So, what do you call a system where you can't force those who are in power to leave without bloodshed? A dictatorship.
      • It may even be gradually put in place with the best of intentions.
        And most likely with roaring cheers from an ebullient crowd.
        • And most likely with roaring cheers from an ebullient crowd.

          Sadly, yes. Fortunately, those same crowds will be cheering in another 20 years when we string up the dictators by their pinkie toes and set 'em on fire.

          -b.

    • So if you are being surveyed you can think of yourself as lucky.
      You're saying that we should be happy with having my public movements tracked by the government?

      You, sir, are a dumbass. Thinking like that is what will eventually make the UK, U.S., and other once-half-free countries into fascist nations. The government just loves it when the citizenry goes along with their latest and greatest draconian measures.
    • Sure, it's ironic given that the brits wrote 1984,

      No: one Brit - George Orwell/Eric Blair - wrote 1984. Perhaps he knew his countrymen all too well and realized that a surveillance society was a possibility or inevitability in Britain.

      -b.

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