Nick Allen
Bloomberg
Friday, December 22, 2006
It's Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university
students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as
Freshers' Week.
One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly,
a disembodied voice booms out from above:
``You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!'' The confused
student obeys as his friends look bewildered.
``People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when
they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of
conscience and comply,'' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough
Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers
in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who
drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.
Almost 70 years after George Orwell created the all-seeing dictator
Big Brother in the novel ``1984,'' Britons are being watched as
never before. About 4.2 million spy cameras film each citizen
300 times a day, and police have built the world's largest DNA
database. Prime Minister Tony Blair said all Britons should carry
biometric identification cards to help fight the war on terror.
``Nowhere else in the free world is this happening,'' said Helena
Kennedy, a human rights lawyer who also is a member of the House
of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. ``The American public
would find such inroads into civil liberties wholly unacceptable.''
During the past decade, the government has spent 500 million
pounds ($1 billion) on spy cameras and now has one for every 14
citizens, according to a September report prepared for Information
Commissioner Richard Thomas by the Surveillance Studies Network,
a panel of U.K. academics.
Who's In Charge?
At a single road junction in the London borough of Hammersmith,
there are 29 cameras run by police, government, private companies
and transport agencies. Police officers are even trying out video
cameras mounted on their heads.
``We've got to stand back and see where technology is taking
us,'' said Thomas, whose job is to protect people's privacy. ``Humans
must dictate our future, not machines.''
Blair said citizens have to sacrifice some freedoms to fight
terrorism, illegal immigration and identity fraud.
``We have a modern world that we are living in, with new and
different types of crime,'' Blair said Nov. 6 at a press conference
in London. ``If we don't use technology in order to combat it,
then we won't be fighting crime effectively.''
Constant Monitoring
In the bowels of New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the London
police force, a windowless room contains a giant bank of TV screens
where the city is monitored around the clock. At the touch of
a button, officers can focus on any neighborhood and zoom in on
people's faces.
Police hunting the killer of five prostitutes in Suffolk were
able to gather 10,000 hours of footage from in and around Ipswich.
By 2016, there will be cameras using facial recognition technology
embedded in lampposts, according to the Surveillance Studies report.
Unmanned spy planes will monitor the movements of citizens, while
criminals and the elderly will be implanted with microchips to
track their movements, the report says.
``The level of surveillance in this country should shock people,''
said David Murakami Wood, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle
who headed the study. ``It is infiltrating everything we do.''
Wood is also concerned about the U.K.'s growing DNA database.
The files contain the genetic codes of more than 3.8 million people,
or 5.2 percent of the population. By comparison, the U.S. has
the DNA records of 0.5 percent of its residents.
DNA matches helped solve 45,000 crimes in the U.K. last year,
including 422 murders, 645 rapes and 9,000 burglaries, according
to the Home Office. But the database isn't foolproof.
Burglar Who Wasn't
Police who knocked on Raymond Easton's door in Swindon, England,
in 1999 were certain he had committed burglary at a house 200
miles (300 kilometers) away. DNA found at the scene was a 37 million-to-1
match with Easton's sample, which had been taken three years earlier.
Easton, a former construction worker, had Parkinson's disease
and could barely dress himself. He was still charged. Further
tests proved he had never been to Bolton, where the burglary occurred,
according to the Greater Manchester police.
``Britain's DNA database is spiraling out of control,'' said
Helen Wallace, deputy director of GeneWatch U.K., which campaigns
for responsible use of genetic science. ``It could allow an unprecedented
level of government surveillance.''
Other government plans include loading the confidential medical
records of 50 million patients in the state-run health system
onto a central database without their consent.
Most controversial of all are Blair's biometric ID cards linked
to a national register holding every citizen's fingerprints, iris
or face scan. Starting in 2010, anyone renewing or applying for
a passport will have to get one.
``Desperate for some sort of legacy, the prime minister has nothing
to offer but Blair's Big Brother Britain,'' said Phil Booth, national
coordinator of the anti-ID card group NO2ID.
Email
