BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING...

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More than four million surveillance cameras monitor our every move, making Britain the most-watched nation in the world. The number of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras has quadrupled in the past three years, and there is now one for every 14 people in the UK. The increase is happening at twice the predicted rate, and it is believed that Britain accounts for one-fifth of all CCTV cameras worldwide.

Estimates suggest that residents of a city such as London can each expect to be captured on CCTV cameras up to 300 times a day, and much of the filming breaches existing data guidelines. Civil liberties groups complain that the rules governing the use of the cameras in Britain are the most lax in the world. They say that, in contrast to other countries, members of the public are often unaware they are being filmed, and are usually ignorant of the relevant regulations. They also argue that there is little evidence to support the contention that CCTV cameras lead to a reduction in crime rates.

Barry Hugill, a spokesman for the human rights and civil liberties organisation Liberty, said, "This proliferation of cameras is simply astounding. The use of CCTV has just exploded in the last few years, and what is terrifying is that we are alone in the world for not even having a debate about what it means for our privacy." Professor Clive Norris, deputy director of the Centre for Criminological Research in Sheffield, presented the new research at an international conference on CCTV at Sheffield University.

Professor Norris conducted a study in 2001 which predicted that the number of cameras would double from one million to two million by 2004. But his most recent study concludes that there are now "at least" 4,285,000 cameras in operation - double his earlier prediction. There are no official government figures for the number of CCTV systems in Britain, but Professor Norris used a detailed study of surveillance cameras in London to calculate his figure.

The research formed part of a European-wide URBANEYE project on the use of CCTV. Professor Norris said, "We are the most-watched nation in the world. One of the surprising findings was how much more control there is in other countries, such as America and France, compared to Britain. Other countries have been much more wary about CCTV, because of long-held concepts such as freedom of expression and assembly.

These seem to be alien concepts in here." The use of cameras to film people in the street is banned in Germany, Canada and several other countries. But it is accepted practice in Britain, which is alone in not having a privacy law that protects people against constant surveillance. The Data Protection Act states that the public has to be informed that CCTV systems are in operation, and be told how they can exercise their legal right to see their own footage.

But civil rights groups said many councils, shops and businesses were failing to provide this information, and they estimated that up to 70% of CCTV camera operators were breaking the rules. Some shopping-centre security guards use the cameras to track "socially undesirable" people, such as groups of teenage boys or rough sleepers, around stores, and then eject them even if they have done nothing wrong. Professor Norris warned, "The use of these practices represents a shift from formal and legally regulated measures of crime control towards private and unaccountable justice."Footage from the cameras has also been passed to newspapers and television companies without people's permission.

Professor Norris said, "CCTV is generally seen as benign rather than as Big Brother-style surveillance. We need to have a much wider debate about exactly what CCTV is doing in terms of our privacy and our society. It is about much more than crime. It enables people to be tracked and monitored and harassed and socially excluded on the basis that they do not fit into the category of people that a council or shopping centre wants to see in a public space."

Over the past decade, the Home Office has handed out millions of pounds in grants to police forces and councils to install CCTV systems in the belief it will reduce and prevent crime. But Mr Hugill said, "All that CCTV does is shift the crime to another area for a bit, and then it returns. If you asked most people, they would rather see the Government spending the money on more police officers than on installing cameras, which do not appear to make much difference anyway." (Source: The Independent)

An official report into the rise of the Big Brother state has warned that Britons could be microchipped in the future. The microchips, which are implanted under the skin, allow the wearer's movements to be tracked and store personal information about them. They could be used by companies who want to keep tabs on an employee's movements or by Governments who want a foolproof way of identifying their citizens, and storing information about them.

The prospect of 'chip-citizens' was raised in an official report for Britain's Information Commissioner Richard Thomas into the spread of surveillance technology. The report, drawn up by a team of respected academics, claims that Britain is a world-leader in the use of surveillance technology and its citizens the most spied-upon in the free world. It paints a frightening picture of what Britain might be like in ten years time unless steps are taken to regulate the use of CCTV and other spy technologies.

The reports editors Dr David Murakami Wood, managing editor of the journal Surveillance and Society and Dr Kirstie Ball, an Open University lecturer in Organisation Studies, claim that by 2016 our almost every movement, purchase and communication could be monitored by a complex network of interlinking surveillance technologies. The most contentious prediction is the spread in the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.

The RFID chips, which can be detected and read by radio waves, are already used in new UK passports and are also used the Oyster card system to access the London Transport network. The authors now warn, "The call for everyone to be implanted is now being seriously debated." (Source: Daily Mail, Oct/06)

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has unveiled plans for a massive expansion of 'Big Brother' State surveillance, covering every phonecall, email, text message and internet visit in Britain. She claimed that storing details of a person's conversations by telephone, computer or website was vital to prevent further terrorist atrocities. Activities which will be subject to snooping for the first time include visits to social networking sites such as Facebook, auction sites such as Ebay, gaming websites and chatrooms.

Police and security services will not be able to access the precise content - but will know each site visited, and to whom and when a phonecall, text message or email was sent. This could be accessed within an hour of being sent, in virtual 'real time', sources say. If this sets alarm bells ringing, and they are concerned about a person's activities, they could seek a ministerial warrant to intercept exactly what is being sent, including the content.

The billions of pieces of data, likely to be stored for at least a year, could even be kept on a giant Government database, officials said. The cost is estimated to be at least £1billion, and could be far higher. The proposals were attacked by MPs and privacy groups as 'Stalinist', 'Orwellian' and a reversal of the presumption a person is innocent until proven guilty. A leaked memo written by sources close to the project revealed it was fraught with difficulties. Officials are split between placing the vast amount of personal data to be collected on the huge central database, or forcing individual service providers, such as internet companies, to store the information, to be accessed on demand.

Currently, the option being worked on is to request data from the service providers, the memo reveals. They are likely to pass on extra costs to customers. The memo says that while the Interception Modernsisation Programme, the name given to the Whitehall team working on the project, favoured a vast database, some Home Office officials viewed this as 'impractical, disproportionate, politically unattractive, and possibly unlawful from a human rights perspective.' Ms Smith herself admitted the public had reason to be concerned but she said that, without increasing their capacity to store data, the police and security services would have to consider a 'massive expansion of surveillance'. (Source: Daily Mail, Oct/08)

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