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knewshound
knewshounds blog
Posted on 09/03/2009 4:36:38 PM PDT by JLS
What’s next in surveillance-happy Britain? Cameras in private homes? Actually, yes.
To passing tourists, catching yet another government poster apprising you of electronic surveillance looming in the distance, the initials “CCTV” can be oddly reminiscent of “CCCP,” the Cyrillicized abbreviation for the U.S.S.R. CCTV is the United Kingdom’s ubiquitous acronym. Nobody needs to be told what it stands for. It accompanies you as you make your way to work, whether by car, bus, train, or taxi. And it’s there waiting for you at the end of your shift, as you go to buy your groceries or head to the movies. Last year, when David Davis resigned from the shadow cabinet because of the remarkably bipartisan insouciance about the “erosion of fundamental British freedoms,” he said there was “a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens.” The British, according to another well-retailed line, are apparently the most video-monitored people in the world other than the North Koreans. In an aside in his new novel The Defector, the American author Daniel Silva lays out the background:
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.macleans.ca ...
Steyn ping opportunity.
But actually, in Britain, the purpose of the cameras is to identify the victims, so they can be more effectively prosecuted.
caneras everywhere and yet -
the ubiquitous network of 10,000 closed-circuit television cameras that gave London’s Metropolitan Police the ability to monitor activity, criminal or otherwise, on virtually every street in the British capital. A recent government study had concluded that the system had failed in its primary objective: deterring crime and apprehending criminals. Only three per cent of street robberies were solved using CCTV technology, and crime rates in London were soaring. Embarrassed police officials explained away the failure by pointing out that the criminals had accounted for the cameras by adjusting their tactics, such as wearing masks and hats to conceal their identities. Apparently, no one in charge had considered that possibility before spending hundreds of millions of pounds and invading the public’s privacy on an unprecedented scale.
Ayn Rand had a term for it: the sanction of the victim.
Interesting article.
My husband & I watch a lot of BBC America TV and he once said to me, “Why are all the young people always wearing hoodies?” Now we know.
I all so terribly sad to see a people once free fall under tyranny. The world owes so much to the British empire which carried civilization to the far reaches of the globe (I’ll probably have to be re-educated for my anti-multicultural thoughts).
One can see where the world is heading. Oh, I have hope that we can delay the inevitable slide, at least here in the US, but technology favors the totalitarians.
And, I think it’s important to note that it’s very, very difficult to avoid the slow creep into totalitarianism. The British might have been up in arms (when they had them) had the government proposed this dreadful CCTV network right off.
My point?
We’d better start putting the proverbial foot down and hold it, or we’ll be in the same sorry state before long!
Thank you.
That really makes my skin crawl.
“Ayn Rand had a term for it: the sanction of the victim.”
So others may understand:
The “sanction of the victim” is the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the “sin” of creating values.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sanction_of_the_victim.html
I looked and looked for one of those for sale on the net, ebay etc. when I first read about this poster years ago, but never found one....
btt
Not too sound like a complete nutcase but I have HEARD that the reason our government pushed for the whole nationwide digital TV thing was because of this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ4iIM8Eljc
Could be the book cover for 1984 :(
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