Someone to watch over you

From Compass magazine

Earlier this year it was revealed that Haringey Council in East London had taken it upon itself to spend its residents’ money to spy upon them.

This impoverished borough lashed out £21,000 on an aeroplane with a camera to buzz its tax-payers’ houses at an altitude of 1,500 feet. Was the reason to improve traffic flow? A look-out to find litter hotspots perhaps? No. Haringey had decided that it should appoint itself a guardian of the planet; the aeroplane ported heat-seeking cameras to find out which homes wasted the most energy.

“This single study will play a key role in helping us address three of the biggest issues currently facing Haringey – climate change, fuel poverty and housing waiting lists,” claimed Labour councillor Isidoros Diakides. This can only lead surely to an army of bullying council workers bashing your door down and asking you to explain the draught coming from the bedroom window.

The UK is the most looked over nation on earth. We are spied upon by more than four million cameras and photographed on average 300 times a day. We don’t know the exact figure, because anyone is free to spy upon anyone else. The police, business, transport networks, private detectives and of course nannying councils can – and do – set up thousands of them to keep us on a righteous civic path.

Amazingly, we seem to find this acceptable.

But why? We would be horrified if as we walked to work we were surrounded by masked figures panning around us with the latest digicams, if they sat next to us on the bus zooming in on the book we were reading, or trotted along behind us as we walked through the corridors of our offices. This is in effect what is happening. Yet we seem not to be bothered by this gross intrusion into our private lives.

In the London borough of Camden there are Flashcams which, triggered by “suspicious” behaviour automatically go off with a vivid flash and a voice shouts “Stop! If you are engaged in an illegal activity, your photograph will be taken and used to prosecute you. Please leave the area.”

There is an argument in favour of cameras, of course. Who can argue when the grainy image of some thug on caught on CCTV is called up in a court of law as he sticks his boot into a hapless passerby and condemns him to a few years behind bars (or, at least reinforced glass with only a colour TV and a few drug-dealing friends for company)? Who of us has not thought, when the disappearance of a child such as Madeleine McCann is reported, if only there were a few more cameras around?

The truth is, though, that cameras do little to prevent crime. Research from the Scottish Centre for Criminology, for example found that the year following the introduction of CCTV in Glasgow recorded crime rates rose by 9 per cent and detection fell by 4 per cent. In the 10 or so years since the explosion of spy cameras, our streets are hardly safer or more civilised. On the contrary, our town centres have become no-go areas for anyone not of a mind for a fight or being subject to boorish drunken abuse.

But the authorities cling on to the idea that they should be scrutinising us ever more carefully. It is what people in power do.

Police minister Ton McNulty revealed in May that the Home Office was considering using “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAVs) to watch over towns and cities. Yes, more spyplanes. Housing estates are now built with CCTV as standard; instead of patrons of the local pub, the shop, the park and even the local nick – remember police stations? – keeping an eye out for our wellbeing, monitoring low-level crime is now entrusted to a functionary who sits in front of a rack of television screens.

But what have these cameras achieved so far? Inevitably their most notable effect is in raising money for the government by policing those willing to be policed.

Drivers caught speeding through motorway roadworks were fined £5 million last year. On the M2 in Kent, cameras snapped 16,078 drivers flouting temporary limits – usually set at a self-righteous 40 miles an hour – generating £1 million in fines; 15,813 were caught on the M40 and 13,697 on the M1.

You could argue, of course, that if you are on the right side of the law, then you have nothing to fear. But when it becomes a crime to live in an old Victorian house with draughty windows, we should surely be very frightened indeed.