Beware, CCTV in Operation
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> beware, cctv in operation
"I KNOW WHAT YOUR THINKING, I WISH I'D
TAKEN THE BLUE PILL!"
CCTV is a subject which I hope would occur to
most people at any one time but it seems that
precious little is being done to address it.
Read on my friends read on for knowledge is
power……..
A couple of weeks ago The Who guitarist Pete
Townsend was arrested and questioned over allegations
of indulgence in child pornography (to date
no charges have been brought against the man
but suffice to say his career is in ruins anyway.)
While the whole country screamed and shouted
over the explosion in the numbers in paedophiles
and the fact that no children are safe to act
in school plays without being molested, I sat
back and thought about what a strange world
it is that we now live in where a persons personal
details can be brandished around and passed
on from organisation to organisation under the
auspices of fighting crime. How easy it is for
governments to get their hands on someone’s
private life from another source and then use
those details to discredit them in the name
of crime prevention, even if they are innocent.
Since September 11th the Governments determination
to increase their knowledge of each of the country’s
inhabitants has increased. It has sold us the
story that it is making us safer – safer
from terrorists, safer from paedophiles and
safer from each other – but in reality
it is beginning to curb our freedoms. What is
interesting is that the bulk of the legislation
which grants the government – and other
bodies – the right to step up surveillance
of innocent people was introduced BEFORE the
two towers fell. After 9/11 the government had
found a good excuse for the introduction of
extremely controversial acts which in less threatening
times would have found it difficult to win public
support. The consequence of September 11th was
an increase in the Governments determination
to do something about terrorism but rather than
rush to make us safer it has cut our freedoms.
British common law makes no presumption that
the individual has the right to privacy and
this has generated an extraordinary culture
in British officialdom which presumes a right
to investigate.
The one Act which has caused the most media
furore is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers
Act 2000 (RIPA). RIPA extends the telephone
tapping powers of government departments to
cover electronic communications giving the state
vast powers to spy on email traffic (including
traffic between journalists and contacts which
would have worrying consequences on freedom
of the press if taken to the logical extreme.)
A pretty obvious objection to RIPA from a commercial
point of view is the fact that it damages the
UK as an e-business destination – no-one
would really want to set up an internet company
which has no privacy at all.
Every email you send and receive is stored and
logged on a huge database. Maybe no-one will
look at it. Maybe they will. The trouble is
you as a British citizen have no right to find
out what information concerning yourself is
held and who sees it. The danger with storing
people’s private correspondence (including
text messages) is that when looking for acts
of subservience it is pretty simple to create
a crime or proposed crime out of innocent words.
Richeleu said: "give me ten lines written
by the most honest man and I will find something
in them to hang him for."
Logging, storing and snooping peoples emails
and text messages (on average mobile phone companies
store every single call you make and text you
send for five years – Virgin Mobile is
the worst offender holding all those details
for SEVEN years!) is one thing but the accumulation
of information goes far wider. Marketing companies
sell your details on to customers, medical records
are now open to the police and credit card purchases
are watched. Gradually a complete profile of
each citizen can be built up. Already today
someone somewhere has discovered about me that
I am looking for freelance writing work, I am
fashion conscious, I am partial to Chinese literature,
I drive a mini and I am travelling up to Newcastle
on Monday. Valuable information for a marketing
company. In the last two weeks I have been bombarded
by offers of cut price subscriptions to various
restaurant magazines. I eat out a lot but where
did they get this information from? What right
have they to invade my privacy like this by
assuming I welcome such intrusions. Would it
occur to you that your pharmacy had been selling
your information if you kept receiving information
on new anti-depressants because once you purchased
some prozac on credit card? Probably no but
perhaps it should. It may seem small scale –
we can all handle a phone call or chain mail
– but this is the tip, and least sinister
part of the ice berg. "Privacy is like
oxygen. We really appreciate it only when it
is gone" said Charles Sykes author of The
End of Privacy.
Undoubtedly some data about us needs to be stored
in the interests of national security. The question
is who should have access to our data, for how
long and for what use. Take for example criminal
records. Most police intelligence is now stored
on computer and it has become a daunting task
to try and protect it. A spot audit in one force
revealed that within 24 hours of the arrest
of a high profile criminal for murder, 67 police
officers had accessed his criminal record. When
interviewed most acknowledged that they did
it out of curiosity. What is worrying is that
if it is that easy to snoop, then an unscrupulous
member of staff could have taken a look and
then leaked the information. It would seem however
that at the moment the Government is not worried
about including criminal sanctions for unauthorised
access to or misuse of individual data. The
law has not kept up with technology.
The problem with privacy is that it tends to
be associated with evil. "There is not
a crime which does not live by secrecy"
thundered Joseph Pulitzer. If you’ve nothing
to hide why should you care if people have a
look? Would you apply this to going to the toilet?
Having sex? Changing a tampon? Of course some
would but the majority would not. Would you
care if someone read your mind all day everyday?
Who gets to decide what thoughts are good and
what aren’t? It is very shaky ground and
the truth is that although most of us are concerned
about the erosion of our privacy, we also accept
it as a consequence of living in the modern
world. No, privacy is not a human right but
it is the right of a free human being. A hundred
years ago privacy was one of the most valued
of human rights and yet today there are very
few instances when the words ‘it’s
none of your business’ actually have any
authority. Privacy is not an absolute. There
has to be some balance of it, just like any
other right, with freedom of information, crime
prevention and national security. But privacy
has no legal status and is therefore the easy
victim in the fight against crime. John Wadham
from Liberty says that despite the Governments
assertion that CCTV cameras, ID cards and email
tracking will decrease crime, it is in fact
misguided. Lots could be done to make us safer
– more alert, better resourced police
and security and focussed intelligence for example.
RIPA and the Anti-Terrorism Act 2000 do not
allow for this. "If we are defending the
values of a free and democratic society we don’t
win by undermining those values ourselves."
With Acts like RIPA the Government is demanding
that we trust it not to misuse our information
and yet RIPA explicitly says that the Government
does not trust us. The exchange seems a little
unfair.
A situation like 1984 is a long way off yet
but the foundations are definitely being laid.
Privacy is what gives us control over our lives
and enables us to be individuals with individual
thoughts and individual habits. We shouldn’t
be so keen to sacrifice this because it will
be near impossible to get it back. Next time
you take a book out of the library, buy a porn
film, send an email, book a holiday or have
an HIV test remember that someone somewhere
is watching, that that information has been
logged and stored and could well be used to
harass you with information, to refuse you a
mortgage or even have you arrested. It concerns
me and if you value your freedom it should concern
you too.
"The telescreen received and transmitted
simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made,
above the level of a very low whisper, would
be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he
remained within the field of vision which the
metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as
well as heard. There was of course no way of
knowing whether you were being watched at any
given moment. How often, or on what system,
the Thought Police plugged in on any individual
wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable
that they watched everybody all the time. But
at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever
they wanted to. You had to live - did live,
from habit that became instinct - in the assumption
that every sound you made was overheard, and
except in darkness, every movement scrutinised."
GEORGE ORWELL ‘1984’
N.B. Todays infrared technology can see in the
dark and can automatically attempt to pick out
or enter your face from/to a database of suspects.
This imperfect technology is being deployed
without any enforcable, consistent rules or
means of appeal to correct the inevitable persecution
of the innocent. Take a look at www.spy.org.uk
Editorial : Susan Greenwood
    
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