Something tells me that HMG does not expect their proposed fox-hunting ban to be awfully popular with the country folk:
Police are planning to use spy cameras in the countryside to enforce a ban on fox hunting.
Chief constables intend to site CCTV cameras on hedgerows, fences and trees along known hunting routes to enable them to photograph hunt members who break the law after hunting with hounds is outlawed.
They used to warn that ‘walls have ears’. Now walls will have eyes as well. I suppose the panopticon countryside is nothing more than a logical extension of our panoptican cities. It is merely a matter of time before every workplace and every home is wired up to the Big Eye of Big Brother. Then the nightmare really begins.
There exist all manner of varying justifications for this surveillance-fever but there is only one reason that our political masters are deploying it with such alacrity: because they can.
The same technology that enables us to chatter with each other across national boundaries is being used to create a tightly-wrapped police state.
What a very, very grim future we face.
I thought of the same thing this evening as I watched a “60 Minutes” piece on “DNA Dragnets”. When DNA is discovered at a rape or murder scene thousands of co-workers, neighbors and acquaintances give, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes under court order, DNA samples to be compared with DNA from the crime scene. The piece mentioned that this was more common in Britain. Less opposition in Britain as well.
You need two hunts. One to take out the CCTV cameras and then the real hunt.
Of course, in civilized countries, where the police work with the citizentry to reduce true crime, you wouldn’t need such crap.
You guys have one of the most radical Muslim populations in the world and you’re worried about foxes? You need John Kerry much more than we do.
Hehe, I giggle at these “end of the world as we know it” predicaments.
The police don’t put up the camera “because they can”, but because it is cheaper than having police officers running the countryside looking for a hunt. The real “big brother” scenario is not economically viable, and will not happen, not in the 1984 version nor the “all privacy is lost” way. If you’re lucky, one officer will monitor 20 cameras, covering different types of habitats. Let me then point out that in prisons where there are 10 cameras per security officer, people still manage to escape.
I can well imagine that the now standard intrusive practice of video tapeing everyone at every crowd or public event will continue to be used by the police at fox hunts.
It is ironical that the very powers grabbed by the Home Office a few years back to allow a constable to demand the removal of a face covering such as a mask or scarf or motorbike helmet etc, which was brought in specifically to allow identification of anti fox hunting demonstrators, might now be used against the fox hunters themselves.
It is not clear how the Chief Constables are going to put CCTV cameras on private land. Unlike Local Council owned streets or land in urban areas, where it is easy to grant permission to set up temporary mobile CCTV spy cameras to monitor “hotspots”, doing this on private land without the permission of the land owner would require an authorisation for Intrusive Surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
However, this is only supposed to be applied to “serious crimes” such as would merit a prison term of 3 years for a first time offender if they are convicted.
The maximum penalty under the Hunting Bill is a Scale 5 fine, currently £5000, and various forfeitures of dogs, vehicles etc. i.e. this is not considered to be a “serious” crime and any such CCTV surveillance would not be “proportionate” and therefore would be illegal.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmbills/150/2004150.htm
http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/archives/000450.html
re: “60 Minutes” DNA evidence – in the UK, all the DNA tissue samples and the crudely digitally processed “genetic fingerprints” (not enough alleles are tested according to the inventor of the technique)are retained, forever, not just from the convicted rapist or murderer, but from any people who have been found innocent of those crimes, and any people who were chose to “cooperste” with the police by submitting “voluntary” samples,
These used to be destroyed after a period, but no longer, a decision which was recently upheld by the House of Lords (the highest court of appeal in the UK).
http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/archives/000407.html
I can well imagine that the now standard intrusive practice of video tapeing everyone at every crowd or public event will continue to be used by the police at fox hunts.
It is ironical that the very powers grabbed by the Home Office a few years back to allow a constable to demand the removal of a face covering such as a mask or scarf or motorbike helmet etc, which was brought in specifically to allow identification of anti fox hunting demonstrators, might now be used against the fox hunters themselves.
It is not clear how the Chief Constables are going to put CCTV cameras on private land. Unlike Local Council owned streets or land in urban areas, where it is easy to grant permission to set up temporary mobile CCTV spy cameras to monitor “hotspots”, doing this on private land without the permission of the land owner would require an authorisation for Intrusive Surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
However, this is only supposed to be applied to “serious crimes” such as would merit a prison term of 3 years for a first time offender if they are convicted.
The maximum penalty under the Hunting Bill is a Scale 5 fine, currently £5000, and various forfeitures of dogs, vehicles etc. i.e. this is not considered to be a “serious” crime and any such CCTV surveillance would not be “proportionate” and therefore would be illegal.
c.f. Hunting Bill 2004
“Hunting Bill – dogs banned but not leopards, lions or horses”
re: “60 Minutes” DNA evidence – in the UK, all the DNA tissue samples and the crudely digitally processed “genetic fingerprints” (not enough alleles are tested according to the inventor of the technique)are retained, forever, not just from the convicted rapist or murderer, but from any people who have been found innocent of those crimes, and any people who were chose to “cooperste” with the police by submitting “voluntary” samples,
These used to be destroyed after a period, but no longer, a decision which was recently upheld by the House of Lords (the highest court of appeal in the UK).
c.f.
“Retention and analysis of DNA samples – even if you are innocent”
It may not be the end of the world, but I’m pretty sure it would be the end of the countrysiders’ tethers. Cameras in town have the excuse of deterring personal crime. Cameras in the countryside have no funtion at all beyond spying. An act of such pure contempt by TB and co would likely trigger full scale rebellion.
Lordy! When will you people take up which ever weapons your masters still allow you, and REVOLT?
I hope those overpopulated foxes eat lots of leftist’s kittens and poodles.
we all have a social responsibilty (!) to destroy these cameras whenever they are put up. DESTROY DESTROY!
Bobby, the countryside is damn close to it already, if I read the omens aright. Basically people appear to be holding their breath and waiting.
BTW, if you want to know where civilian guns are in the UK, aside from in the hands of criminals, a great many of them are in the countryside. Shotguns are allowed if you have a “need” for them on the farm. And shotguns are rather good as guerilla weaponry.
Smash a few up and they have an excuse to buy cameras to watch the cameras to watch the cameras!
Who will operate the cameras? I thought the police already had their hands full with all the paperwork associated with dirtythought crime investigation…
BB,
One thing 60 Minutes may not have mentioned is that once you’ve given police a DNA sample in Britain, it–or rather the “fingerprint” taken from it–stays in the records–a national database–and can be used again at any time.
The other thing is that in Britain, police may take DNA samples from all arrestees, charged or not. And–one more brick in the wall–the Government has indicated it wishes to make all offenses (and therefore the suspicion of them) arrestable.
No individual loss of liberty seems significant in itself. It is not just the accumulation of little gains in state power that is dangerous, but the interaction between them that is more like multiplication than addition.
Just a flashback: during a CND demonstration in Whitehall in 1960 I saw a van, escorted by the police, with a film camera on top driving up the side of the marchers and capturing the faces of as many of the participants as possible. It is not a new phenomenon therefore. It did however give me a very uneasy feeling.
These cameras will presumably be using RF to get the pictures back to Thoughtcrime Central? DF to find them, or just jam them outright (although that would probably fall under the auspices of the Wireless Telegraphy Act).
Costly, unwanted and unwarranted.
Well, down here in France (I mean ‘la France profonde’ of course, not the cesspool with an Eiffel tower in it), people often use the various “no hunting” and other “regulated hunting” signs for target practice – and it frequently even goes as far as shooting on your basic, non hunting related roadsigns.
Hence the holes.
Surely, British hunters – and generally speaking, countryside folks who, in my experience at least, are less prone to let urban bureaucrats get in their way – can figure out something to do with those cameras?
How does CCTV tell the difference between a group of people on horseback, riding across the country (who just happen to be wearing their old hunting cloths) with their dogs, and a group of hunters following a pack of hounds that are pursuing a fox?
Apologies for the problems with my previous double posting (and misspellings).
One alternative to CCTV spy cameras on private land to watch for illegal “hunting with dogs” would be the construction of observation towers such as were / still are a feature of the “bandit country” landscape near the Irish border in South Armagh.
The ideal way round any ban is to form a ‘Hound Exercise Club’. They cannot be held responsible if a hound happens to kill vermin.
What a bloody country. Give me a double whisky.
Alan Massey: they don’t need to tell the difference – just spot them and send a mounted policeman along with a camcorder “to make sure it’s all legal”.
Ian Bennett: they could and would be held liable.
Both of the above would fail dismally even if they “worked” because they concede the principle of actual open hunting, because you can’t rally popular support around hypocrisy and the exploiting of loopholes, and because the ban-makers can spin it like the ban is working (obvious hunts having evaporated). Both would also fail to transmit hunting to the next generation.
Open defiance might work. Cowardly tricks will certainly fail.
Let’s face it, it’s not just the fox hunting that’s the issue. Once the cameras are there, they stay, and any infraction counts (including capricious laws of the future). It’s simply a matter of killing a fly with a sledge hammer. Regardless of what you are doing, they can see and watch, foxes or no. That’s the issue and the one the author was driving at I think.
Whether it’s cliche or not I don’t care. The likes of Hitler could not have existed if the likes of the Weimer Republic hadn’t stitched together a more unified Germany, but was ultimately too weak, laying the infrastructure for a more invasive regime. I’ve an opinion that soft leftism opens the door for hard left and hard right. They toss together top heavy structure then are too weak to retain it. Allowing the soft left to invade the countryside with cameras to protect foxes can only serve those who might take command at some future time. It’s not so fanciful as one might think. Does anyone believe that the average German in the 1920’s/early 30’s imagined Hitler coming along? “Oh WE’RE so urbane today, and we’ve progressed beyond such nonsense.”
I don’t believe it. The level of invasion necessary in the future to maintain cohesion of State will only grow. Tax assessments will rise. What constitutes evasions will grow. More control of resources-at-large will be in the offing. The definition of private property and rights will be watered down even more. Soft claims on future production will soon turn to hard commandeering. Money will only be electronic blips on hard drives. Audio and video will be monitored round the clock. The only missing ingredient is a fundamentalist movement to catch the fancy of the populists and the rest IS history.
Crack pot ravings? Maybe. I just might be that those who control the money and the cameras and the roadways and the health system and the retirement system and the gendarmes and the airwaves and the interest rates and the ‘voluntary’ tax system and the freedom to associate and the data base of social security numbers and the courts just might be perfectly in tune with how I see things. But it’s pretty unlikely. And it’s just possible that some relative fringe becomes front and center with a few economic set backs. And the centralization has already taken place. That’s a combination I can’t stomach.
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Bingo! Give that man his prize.
The issue of fox-hunting is (almost) beside the point.
I strongly suggest the creation of camera location databases. In the US, there is FOIA which would require the release of documentation showing where cameras are and how they work. Once you know where they are and what they can see, the hard part of dismantling such a system is done.
Reddefine the goal of fox hunting to be the location, de-fleaing and spay or neutering of feral foxes.
toolkien: “Does anyone believe that the average German in the 1920’s/early 30’s imagined Hitler coming along?”
Doesn’t work. Naziism was not some sudden surprise. It reflected the normal beliefs and mindset of the time, writ large. These patterns were quite evident in Weimar Germany. They aren’t present in modern Britain.
So, Britain won’t become nazi. Won’t either become stalinist. But it could become a stifling puritan nanny-bureaucracy.
IMO, the Big Idea that moves towards nanny buraucracy, is: “it’s better to tie a man’s hands and make it deterministically impossible for him to do evil, than to let him excercise moral choice and punish after the fact. Punishment is so inhumane, and by then the harm is already done, it’s too late to protect the victims. Harm can be prevented if we preempt the option to do evil”.
BTW the whole neocon project is utterly steeped in this pernicious and illiberal idea 😉
I wonder who’ll start complaining when all these farmers decide to kill off their (now useless) hunting hounds..
Doesn’t work. Naziism was not some sudden surprise. It reflected the normal beliefs and mindset of the time, writ large. These patterns were quite evident in Weimar Germany. They aren’t present in modern Britain.
So, Britain won’t become nazi. Won’t either become stalinist. But it could become a stifling puritan nanny-bureaucracy.
I wasn’t saying Britain would become specifically Nazi, but that whatever popular revolution that would take place would have the infrastructure for despotism already in place (applies to the US as well). All it takes are some lean times and a few firebrands and the table is set. There are plenty of instances where such movements didn’t succeed, but two prime examples where it did (leninist/stalinist russia and nazi germany) and that in the last 100 years.
And I think when it happens it’s not simply a Nanny State. As my post expounded on, I foresee a lean future and government pressed to find revenues from somewhere. The level of Force necessary to keep the books ‘balanced’ will increase. When central monetary policies ultimately fail (as I believe they will) the fallout will be dramatic. The miserable masses will be motivated to install an authortarian regime to ‘right the ship’ all with a thin veneer of privacy, if any at all, will conveniently already be in place. During the Nazi era there had to be stool pigeons and rats to do the dirty work of the Gestapo et al. Now all one would have to do is fire up a PC at cential command to monitor peoples’ movements and actions.
So it really is a two prong issue, one dealing with the eroding of privacy for spurious reasons, and the inevitable rise of super-Statism (IMO). When the State comes for more and more, there will be less and less ability to deflect its reach, and the ability to join together into movements to thwart its advance grows smaller and smaller. Today the ‘crime’ is fox hunting, tomorrow it will be inadequate sacrifice to ‘the people’ and there will literally be no place to hide.
So the reference to Naziism was just an example to those who cannot foresee a regime who would use Force to that degree regardless of name (case in point the worst you foresee is an irritating Nanny State). I certainly can, and cameras trotted around willy-nilly for useless reasons only makes the dread grow.
So either I’m a raving loonie gnawing on unfounded fears, or I’m reasonably predicting the future. Either way, the desire to curb fox-hunting shouldn’t require a blanket invasion of open spaces by the State. Freedom and security are inverse to each other, and to completely remove unsupervized enjoyment of open spaces to curb one illegality IS overkill in itself regardless of it being commandeered by totalitarians later on.
Not a raving loonie, toolkien, I fear. I only depart from you in that I disagree that super-statism requires a lean future to make it a reality. It will make a lean future in the course of promoting itself.
Just like many African countries impoverished largely because they are run by and for the wa-Benzi, Britain is steadily bleeding all the private wealth into the hands of the official class and its corporate hangers-on. The killing belief and mindset–much better embedded than anti-Semitic ideology in Weimar Germany–in the populace is that “it’s not my problem: they [the state] should do something”.
Guy: that’s an interesting point, does the expectation that Blair’s government will return with a much reduced majority give you any hope that the rise of so much state surveillance will be curbed? (Not expecting a ‘yes’!).
(Of course a conservative government might be a little better but they’d have to concede ground to the left to get elected in the first place.) Or is toolkien right in believing the rise of totalitarianism in Britain to be inevitable?
Compare the sinister amount of money and infringements of civil liberties being perpetrated in the name of a ban on foxhunting, with the insouciant lack of the expenditure of money and deployment of cameras to identify over a million illegal aliens.
Just as hunting happens in the country, illegal aliens live in the cities in ghettoes specific to immigrants from their “home countries”. Employing the money and technology being expended to catch illegal hunts would results in round-ups of hundreds of illegals per day.
The problem, of course, is, hunters are British people pursuing a British sport and are therefore anathema to vicious, destructive spirits, like Tony Blair, in this nightmareish government.
Mike, I agree with Toolkien. I think one of the reasons for these despicable cameras is the same as the reason they put that stomach churning scupture of that malformed pregnant woman in Trafalgar Square, square of British heroes. (Is it in place yet? I haven’t seen anything about it….) Which is, because they can.
It is a display of the power of the state over the sensitivities and sensibilities of the citizenry. It is grossly unjust and unmerited. That is the point.
Verity: I’m afraid I don’t know what ‘malformed pregnant woman sculpture’ you mean as I live in Edinburgh rather than London (and haven’t been there in ages).
But you know what? I do think toolkien has a point (or two). I think there is a conflict between the left’s ‘expanding moral sphere’ (ban fox-hunting, equal opportunities etc) and the liberty of individuals.
Having said that I recall Orwell’s point that a future totalitarianism is a permanent possibility for any basically liberal society anyway and so I still doubt how strong that possibility is in present-day UK.
One of the things that occurs to me when people talk about the ever greater centralisation of power especially under Blair – is that the limitation mechanisms on Blair’s power (parliament and cabinet) are actually quite real still and it is only a measure of his personal success and persuasiveness that he hasn’t been reigned back in more often than he has. The next prime minister (whoever that is) probably won’t be half as successful as Blair.
And just to add a gratuitous point: it’s pretty obvious Blair himself doesn’t give a monkeys about fox-hunting or the erosion of civil liberties otherwise he’d have forced the bill through ages ago.
Mike – I would have thought The Scotsman would have had an item, and commentary, on the Trafalgar Sq empty plinth, but anyway, my point stands.
“But you know what? I do think toolkien has a point (or two). I think there is a conflict between the left’s ‘expanding moral sphere’ (ban fox-hunting, equal opportunities etc) and the liberty of individuals.”
Yes, the Samizdatiat has been commenting on this for two years, and perhaps longer, with increasing concern. Even some blinkered mainstream newspapers have started expressing belated concern over the past year or so.
That this government is dangerous to the health of the civil society has been obvious since Blair first got in and started imposing his tiny vision on the British, who were so supine they voted him in a second time. Well, the British didn’t actually vote him in. Most people didn’t cast a ballot and he slithered in with just over a quarter of the electorate actively wanting him in office. (I think it was 28%.)
Maybe the hunting ban will change things, but I doubt it. The majority of our countrymen (meaning Britons) just don’t care enough about personal liberty.
Verity: I hardly ever read the papers (a) because I’m a snob, and (b) because if I do, I’ll read maybe one article at most before I start to yawn and start thinking silly things. Same with TV. I’m still young and only developing my political views – I was 17 when Blair got in and have never bothered to vote yet partly because I always feel like throwing up when I see someone defending their views with bad arguments and not even realising it.
“There exist all manner of varying justifications for this surveillance-fever but there is only one reason that our political masters are deploying it with such alacrity: because they can.”
The reason why they can has nothing to do with the technology but is entirely because we let them.
I wonder how long these cameras will last once the hounds start scent-marking them?
Th point that has not been raised is that this is one more example of the police being used to forward a political agenda.Irrespective of the morality or ethics of fox hunting, banning it is not a public good,merely a political objective.The police cannot cope with law and order matters without extending their powers into the realms of social engineering.
Toolkien,My fear is not that we become a totalitarian state,but that those constructing it are utterly incompetent,the NHS,education,transport,passports,immigration,housing,crime and the Dome,please add as required.
Can someone link to a picture of this heinous statue?
Superficially, this reminds me of the brouhaha in Richmond, VA over putting a statue of Arthur Ashe (famous black tennis player) on Monument Ave. Monument Ave is practically dedicated to the Confederacy, as Richmond is the past capital. Anyway, a lot of people opposed the Arthur Ashe statue and they were tarrred and feathered as racists when, in reality, almost everyone secretly agreed it was a horrid statue. In fact, poor Arthur Ashe looks like he’s abusing children in the statue. They look terrified of him and have their arms up in order to block his blows as he beats them with his tennis rackets. It’s just a really bad statue that doesn’t fit stylistically with the rest of the statues, which are mainly generals on horseback. It’s also an odd oatmealy color for a statue.
“[…] does the expectation that Blair’s government will return with a much reduced majority give you any hope that the rise of so much state surveillance will be curbed?”
No (as anticipated). The widespread adoption of surveillance cameras predated Mr Blair. It is hard to know how much of the headlong destruction of civil liberties is the Government’s plan, how much civil service opportunism, given a Government that believes in the state as an instrument for good.
A weaker government has more inducement to go with an administrative agenda. (Look at the second Major government.) The constitutional and political fixes, the fiscal and regulatory reversal of 18 years in half the time, are coherent without the suveillance state, which–as in the Foxhunting case of the original post–takes up any slack they provide it.
I do think the tools of state power are growing independent of the uses they are put to. Those “uses” are pretexts for the growth, but not its driver, which is a built in bureaucratic power hunger. Unless the instrumental power is tackled directly, it will continue to grow under every administration, as it has in Britain since 1900. But we have never witnessed a peacetime expansion like that under New Labour.
There are signs of a grand division in this government. By handing so much fiscal power to Brown, locking the spending departments under the treasury, Blair may have left himself only the national security functions with which to assert his ascendency, and that has exacerbated the drift.
The Tories have shown little understanding of the profound revolution New Labour has achieved by stealth. Perhaps they really haven’t noticed. Perhaps they believe the public cannot be engaged with abstract constitutional issues. Perhaps (my greatest fear) they are afraid to challenge it because they know that authoritarian populism is popular, and to do so might weaken their position.
Its all very well being indignant in the blogosphere, but the important thing is to make the point in the mass protests outside Parliament tomorrow – wednesday. 12:00 onwards.
Also see Mark Steyn’s take on the CCTV in trees idea in todays Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/09/14/do1402.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/09/14/ixportal.html
I think it is so kind and considerate on the part of the government to provide target practice devices throughout the countryside.
Lindenen – I did not categorise the statue as ‘heinous’. Insulting is a better word.
I personally think it is revolting and an example of this government’s in-yer-face, viperish agenda of toppling the underpinnings of civil society. By that I mean, Red Ken and his cohorts present someone born severely disabled as being as ‘heroic’ as British heroes who made personal sacrifices for Britain in the line of what they perceived as their duty.
Ms Lapper was born severely malformed and she may or may not be brave; I have absolutely no interest one way or another. But she has done nothing to further British interests and has no place in a square devoted to British military heroes. No matter the vapid self-righteousness of Red Ken and the sculptor, this statue is designed to be an assault, both on normal sensibilities, and on British history. But it was slyly done. Like the cameras. It was for “a reason”. The sculpture is to demonstrate the triumph of the disabled – as though this was some kind of service to the country. And who would dare say them nay for fear of looking like a churl?
Trafalgar Square is devoted to military heroes who, in the view of the rabid left, should be mocked and jeered for their vision and sacrifices. As I said above, the spy cameras deployed for the hunts are not for catching hunters per se. They are there to prove this government can turn British society upside down and there is nothing anyone can do about it. They have the power.
And it was slyly done. Like the cameras. It was for “a reason”. The sculpture is to demonstrate the triumph of the disabled – as though this was some kind of service to the country. And who would dare say them nay for fear of looking like a churl? And the cameras are being put in place to catch those toffs who think they’re above the law and hunt in defiance of the wishes of St Tony. But they are infecting the countryside with spy cameras for no other reason than to show that they can.
I don’t know how to do links, and I don’t know if this will work. If it does, don’t forget, the real statue is 12′ high.
(Link)
Verity,
“Compare the sinister amount of money and infringements of civil liberties being perpetrated in the name of a ban on foxhunting, with the insouciant lack of the expenditure of money and deployment of cameras to identify over a million illegal aliens.
Just as hunting happens in the country, illegal aliens live in the cities in ghettoes specific to immigrants from their “home countries”. Employing the money and technology being expended to catch illegal hunts would results in round-ups of hundreds of illegals per day”
For your information Verity (as I gather you’ve not been in the country for a while) there are plenty of cameras all over London; tons of them, including in the areas where illegal immigrants probably stay.
But you’ve not really thought this through, have you?
How exactly would one use these cameras to catch illegals? Would they be equipped with special software to detect a ‘furtive foreign face’? Facial recognition software is currently pretty unreliable, & by definition, many illegal immigrants wouldn’t be on record.
Or would you perhaps rather the police just watched the cameras waiting for a non-“british” face to appear & pounced on them demanding identification? That’d doubtless go down well in London, where a huge proportion of the population don’t look traditionally ‘British’. Doubtless increase goodwill towards, & cooperation with, the police too. Not to mention wasting vast amounts of already-overstretched police time which could be better spent catching crack dealers, murderers, rapists, muggers & other scumbags, of whom the capital has a plentiful supply.
As I said before, there are by far enough cameras in London already (and more being added daily; I may have to contribute to a local scheme in my own, low-crime area, in which I have no interest whatsoever). Surely there are enough cameras around anyway; if you wish to make a point against anti-hunting cameras, I’m with you 100%, but making some anti-immigrant statement & advocating greater surveillance in already-very-watched cities is hardly a strong or convincing stance.
A_t – how capitalcentric you are! Spying cameras infest villages and market towns, cities and suburbs, tiny, one-platform railway stations, flung far and wide with the profligate hand of a controlling state. The British are the most spied upon, by their own government, citizenry in the world, a fact which apparently causes that citizenry no qualms.
The spy cameras for the hunts are very specifically targetted. They’re not just for the pleasure of watching people prodding tomatoes on market day in Stoke Newington. In like manner to the spy cameras to catch hunting sneaks, for similar expenditure and dedication, specific ghettoes that shelter Britain’s 1m or so illegal aliens could also be targetted. To look for specific faces. Surely the government has photos of failed “asylum seekers”?
Protecting the national borders is a legitimate role of surveillance.
Verity, see my points above about the amount of work involved in targetting these ‘specific faces’. Someone would have to sit there looking, & they could do much more useful things with their time.
I don’t know how much you’ve read about CCTV, but using it in the way you’ve suggested; to look for particular individuals, is currently very difficult. It’s hard enough for a human being such as I to find a familiar face on a busy train platform; if you gave me a picture of someone & told me to watch footage of a busy street, try & spot them, I wouldn’t rate my chances very highly. As for automation of the task, well… they tried that a little while ago in some commuter hellhole near London, in an attempt to exclude known shoplifters from a particular shopping mall. My understanding is, the whole experiment was an embarrassing failure (though maybe it was a great success & the govt. have swiftly hushed it up pending national rollout of this software, who knows!).
The main use of cctv cameras so far has been to provide evidence for prosecution after a crime has taken place, or to trawl for suspects within specifically delineated areas & times; neither of these techniques would seem particularly useful in your illegal immigrant hunt.
& I am conscious that the whole country’s infested with cameras; apologies if I didn’t make that clear… but London seems like as good a test bed as any, particularly considering many of the ‘ghettoes’ you refer to are probably in the capital.
(& incidentally, their placement on station platforms is one of the few I don’t much object to; they make people waiting for a train on their own feel safer, though how much this is reflected in reality, i’m not sure; someone was brutally assaulted at my local station shortly after they installed a whole bunch of cameras, with attendant ‘for your safety & security…” big brother style announcements)
A_t – Actually, I agree with you about CCTV cameras on train platforms.
“Someone would have to sit there looking, & they could do much more useful things with their time.” Better things than protect our national borders? What, for instance?
Verity, people already protect our national borders; HM Customs, anyone? Plus the sea does quite a good job for the most part.
Better things one could do than hunt for illegals in London: catching the various murderers, rapists, gansters & muggers who operate in London & often get away with it.
Finding & evicting a person who is here illegally, but isn’t committing any other crime, ranks *far* lower in my priorities than catching some mugger/rapist/murderer scumbag & locking him up. Do you think differently? If not, would you not agree that funds/manpower for your proposed project would more than likely be taken from the already-overstretched metropolitan police, hence hampering them in their quest to foil/capture said scumbags?
A_t – as previously noted, you seem to be very Londoncentric. I was not discussing illegals in London so much as the ghettoes in the north.
Catching burglars, rapists, muggers etc is the job of the police. Not that they do it. But it’s what the taxpayers believe they’re paying them for.
Catching illegals is the job of the failed Immigration Department. Not that they do it. But it’s what the taxpayers belief is their remit and what they are paid to do. I don’t see how having Immigration officers looking for specific faces on CCTV in Leicester, for example, would impact on the effectiveness or otherwise of the Metropolitan Police.
“It is, according to its sculptor Marc Quinn, designed to be a counter-blast to the “phallic” Nelson’s Column and a tribute to femininity and disability in an area of “triumphant male statuary”.
Wow, Verity. Wow. I gotta say that I find that statue mind-bogglingly misogynistic. How lovely that in a square full of statues of strong, valiant MEN, there is a statue of a disabled pregnant woman. Key message being that femininity is a disability.
It’s also a revolting statue.
Lindenen – you should have made certain that the quote you quoted did not appear to be attributed to me. It was within an article I googled and linked and wasn’t posted by me.
Certainly, it’s a revolting sculpture, but I don’t think the message was that being a woman is a disability. These are people who ‘celebrate’ womanhood for the reason that it is not manhood.
The point was, Red Ken and his slimy minions were desecrating British history and bravery because they could. They’re not answerable to anyone any more.
Anyway, who cares?
It’s getting closer to that Claire Wolfe moment all the time… but will the countryside have the nerve to do it?
Verity, regardless where you propose your crackpot “catch the illegals” scheme to operate, my main point is, it wouldn’t work. I have pointed out to you that CCTV can not be usefully used in the manner you suggest yet, as technology is not sufficiently advanced, & human beings are not good enough at it. You have not addressed this at all.
The immigration officers you suggest should do the job would sit & watch crowds day after day & I’d be surprised if they caught a single person, giving more grist to your “hey, they don’t do anything anyway” mill.
Reacting to a suggested proliferation of CCTV cameras in one domain by suggesting an increase in surveillance on inhabitants of towns in Northern England is hardly the most robust libertarian/anti-surveillance stance I’ve come across recently. Basically, you’re saying it’s perfectly ok to deploy cameras, provided you disapprove of what the cameras are ostensibly there to prevent. Considering the number of things people object to in this country, I shudder to think of the consequences if everyone was being vocal about which particular individuals/areas they would like to see spied on.
Personally, I’d rather see less cameras, full stop.
A_t – It’s ‘fewer’ cameras’; not ‘less’.
I didn’t address your question about humans not being very good at spotting faces on CCTV screens because I am not informed about this and address it wouldn’t have enhanced my point.
My point was that, if the government, for want of a better word, has found money to install yet more cameras and money to pay people to monitor them, this is a frivolous use of money which would be better deployed in catching criminals. (People who are in our country without permission, in other words, illegally, are criminals and should be apprehended.)
The point of my post was, this is not to catch hunters, but is a demonstration of power. They are doing it because they can. As with that optical assault in Trafalgar square, which exists only to offend. Because they can.
Well Verity, I apologise for my poor vernacular. That aside, perhaps you could look into the issue before suggesting ‘interesting’ alternative uses; I don’t see what was wrong with just saying “it’s wrong; I would rather not see any more cameras put up” rather than making some relatively irrelevant and un-thought-through point. There’s plenty of information on the uses of CCTV on the web; it’s been quite a hot issue in the UK for some time. If you’re interested in the topic, by all means read about it, and then maybe make some practical suggestions (though I’d still suggest the best course would still be to say ‘stop this proliferation now’).
And yes, illegal immigrants do count as criminals, and they’ve clearly broken a law, but I’d argue that catching them & throwing them out of the country or into a prison is significantly less important than catching criminals who have actively harmed people; rapists, muggers, burglars etc. If a person is living in the UK without our government’s permission, but is working hard & minding his own business, I have no particular objection to his presence at all. The fact that he’s contravened a few rules set down by the government about who is allowed to go where doesn’t particularly bother me.
A_t – I wrote a rebuttal to your post – trust me, it was erudite and the wit sparkled like Champagne in a crystal glass, but my fury with an ant on my keyboard provoked me into smashing it with excessive force. This caused my computer to exercise a complex manoeuvre which caused it delete my post plus several other open files.
Somehow, it just didn’t merit reconstructing. But believe me. It was irrefutable.
First of all if someone can afford to fox hunt does that make them wealthy. I assume, not knowing personally any who do, people who ‘hunt for sport’ as with horse, dog and foxes that they had to first purchase said accoutrement and have land enough to do this and of course finances in excess. Presumably the ‘average’ Briton is not partaking in such activities. SO, why then are the wealthy so hell bent of holding on to a tradition which ultimately lends itself to being labelled a rich wanker. Because they can!? Perhaps those paranoid, over-anxious zealots of Orwellian schooling would wish for the ‘rich’ to have more seperate laws. After all, were an average bloke on the street to ride through the countryside on his pony weilding a shotgun shouting ‘I’ll get that bastard!’ some people might be a little unnerved.
One final thing, Spain was smart enough to see that maming and stabbing to death of bulls for ‘sport’ lost them considerable tourist dollars. The bulls still get pissed but the crowd walks away exhilerated rather than horrified. Have they lost any cultural identity because of it?
BBc.
If England is such an authoritarian state, how exactly do you keep you’re site running. Surely if they’re as bad as you say keeping this site would be impossible.