UK Addiction To SURVEILLANCE: The BIG BROTHER Society. CCTV, Freedoms & Privacy ?

UK Addiction To SURVEILLANCE: The BIG BROTHER Society. CCTV, Freedoms & Privacy ?



There are up to 5.9 million CCTV cameras in Britain, according to a report by The British Security Industry Association.

It's thought Britain could have more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world.

Evidence

Footage from CCTV cameras is often used by police as evidence to convict criminals, and some people believe this helps prevent crime.

Much of Britain has been fixated on this number ever since (a figure derived by counting those cameras present on Putney High Street in London and extrapolating upwards for a 'guesstimate'). We've been consistently bombarded with hypotheses on the supposed rise of the "Surveillance State" and George Orwell's Big Brother coming to life ever since.

The BSIA's 51-page document focuses on the number of properties in the UK, floor area, and "alternative appropriate estimates". It accounts for the number of CCTV cameras located in (for example) offices, factories, warehouses, schools, department stores, car parks, and railway stations, and those deployed for "security surveillance, related monitoring and safety aspects". Low-, medium-, and upper-level camera figures for the UK are tabulated.

According to the BSIA, camera numbers in the private sector could be outweighing those operated by the police and local authorities by a factor of somewhere around 70:1.

So the vast majority of cameras are privately owned and operated -- very much contrary to popular opinion that we're all living in a "Surveillance State".

Parliament has made a pleasing start to regulating CCTV and its operation, not least through the auspices of the Security Industry Authority and its own Public Space Surveillance licensing regime.

Is it, though, addressing what many commentators believe to be the central challenge -- the extent of camera proliferation in the private sector and the need for it to be closely monitored?

As stated, evidence to help solve cases of criminality unearthed by the police service often comes from cameras stationed in the private sector, but how many times have we heard about "less than perfect" installations or accusations of generally poor CCTV management? Are CCTV systems genuinely "fit for purpose" (i.e. are they fully operational and recording properly)? Do surveillance solutions meet the needs of their end-users (around image quality, for example)?

Increasingly, more companies wish their premises to be protected by CCTV, but, at the very same time, more non-specialist installers are entering the fray and itching to grab a slice of the commercial action.

Such regulation will ensure the private sector provides the highest-quality video evidence possible for use by the police and the courts. A situation that's very much for the public good.

A new camera technology from Hitachi Hokusai Electric can scan days of camera footage instantly, and find any face which has EVER walked past it.

ts makers boast that it can scan 36 million faces per second.

The technology raises the spectre of governments -- or other organisations -- being able to 'find' anyone instantly simply using a passport photo or a Facebook profile.

The 'trick' is that the camera 'processes' faces as it records, so that all faces which pass in front of it are recorded and stored instantly.

Faces are stored as a searchable 'biometric' record, storing the unique

When the police -- or anyone else -- want to search for a particular individual, they're searching through a gallery of pre-indexed faces, rather than a messy library of footage.

It is so intrusive that Britain may be in breach of human rights laws, he warned, and most people are ignorant of how sophisticated technology has become.
technological ability to use millions of images we capture -- there will be a huge public backlash. It is the Big Brother scenario playing out large. It's the ability to pick out your face in a crowd from a camera which is probably half a mile away."

Imagine if Google or Facebook decided to install their own CCTV cameras everywhere, gathering data about our movements, recording our lives and joining up every camera in the land in one giant control room. It's Orwellian surveillance with fluffier branding. And this isn't just video surveillance --