Britain is 'surveillance society'

Friday afternoon rant.

The bleating of these 'independent' watchdogs
(http://www.ico.gov.uk/ - whose by line is "the UK's independent authority set up to PROMOTE access to official information and to protect personal information" ) make me sick with all their talk of needing 'balance'. These organisations just give the illusion of debate amongst the authorities, and make you think there is some accountability when there really isn't any. So we even hear the police on a news report saying there 'might be too many CCTV cameras in society' - whilst at the same time they are creating a national digital camera network for motor vehicles, supporting ID cards, wanting to get us all on DNA database etc etc. Again we hear supposedly reasonable comments when the reality is waves of repressive laws and surveillance system that are coming in fully supported, and many initiated, by the police. These regulators should be exposed continually for their role in the lie that state powers and the market economy can be made controlled in some way e.g. EnergyWatch and Ofwat who supposedly prevent the excesses of the gas and water companies - as if. Gas companies (and shareholders) have been minting it recently, and the next massive price hike will be water.

From what I can see the main thing the state is
concerned about is losing 'public trust' (votes), so they will now be hard at work creating some spin to convince us
they are listening to these concerns and that not
really something we should worry about! This whilst they carry on building those 69 passport and ID interrogation centres - which already have addresses (http://www.no2id.net/getInvolved/idCentres.php) and whose jobs have already been advertised in the press.

Hope you will come to the Defy-ID gathering in 3 weeks time,
http://www.nottingham-defy-id.org.uk/gathering

Direct Action ... grrrrrr.

guydeborgisdead

These measures were being taken by the State I grew up in -aka one of the Eastern European USSR satellite colonies. They may not have been as technologically advanced as today's surveilance, but concern over surveilance shouldn't be simply written off to paranoid lifestylists - in my own experience it does subdue the population into the mode of fear and survival mode of withdrawal. One step at a time and we will accept ridiculous punishments for what the State perceives as crime against it. Each and every state has been doing this, but when this is done overtly, it signalises one thing - people have been brought to accept that they are treated as criminals and suspects without committing an offence and that they hand over their freedom to the State who pretends to do this as protection. After we accept that the State can get away with watching our every move, to employ people to report on us, the state will bring upon them manufactured sentences at the slightest sign of dissent. Within a block of flats where I lived, there was a flat directly owned by our version of KGB and one of my classmates parents worked for them. A grown up teachers breathing in fear in case they'd say something in front of that child who would tell on them to his parents and their life could go to the shitter and their loved ones left to fend for themselves with no support and dicriminative political backround record.

I agree pretty much with what you said, little_brother. I will try to look for something close to my area.

Edit: Don't wanna double-post and the other comment was added while I posted this.
I'm not sure how one could feel safer with CCTV's - they will not deter mindless criminal trying to rob you or whatever else, and the calculating criminal will simply get you where they are not. Maybe in such a case, one may feel safer with microchip inserted into one's own body. Well, actually this is paranoia.

Much as I was right then and you're right now, to deny that CCTV isn't grossly overused would be absurd. Britain's something of a world leader in this. Apparently there's a CCTV camera for every 14 people in this country. Bear in mind the vast majority of CCTV cameras exist to protect property and not people, and one might almost sense a class line developing here...

That said, at any one time, only 20% of speed cameras actually have any film in them. I wonder what the equivalent statistic is for regular CCTV.

Well my liberty is important to me Jack; I want to live in a world without cctv. Does that make me a 'lifestylist'? I think this sniping at so-called 'lifestylists' is a crock of shit; there were plenty of people in Spain before the revolution who experimented with life choices such as not smoking; vegetarianism; living with partners without marriage; education outside of schools, and there are examples from across the history of radicalism of people taking decisions of conscience that they can no longer bear some aspect of the status quo. These decisions do not create a 'lifestyle' movement as opposed to some truly revolutionary category; wtf are you arguing for? Swimming like a fish through the population? Well enjoy your fucking MacDonalds for lunch, but that's just another lifestyle choice and a slightly more irresponsible one than lentils!

I am in two minds about this - I don't think that it could possibly be a step on the way to a super fascist state, but there is something a bit eery about it, imo

Wrt Alan and Jack - I often have a gross over-estimation of my street fighting abilities - so cctv cameras are no use to me. I mean, isn't hunting down the violent crack heads what its all about? Kind of makes your harsh punichment beatings redundant.

Yeah, At the Raise Your Banners in Norwich it was held at a school and I noticed CCTV in those loos as well. wonder how widespread/well-known it is...

The one I saw overlooked at least one of the cubicles, without actually standing on a chair and peering from the same height I wouldn't be able to say about the other two. First instance was in 99 apparently, with the assurance that they'd only look at the sinks and cubicle door.

Not the same issue at all. I don't want cops to have guns because of who they are likely to use them on, and kill with them. If they just took video footage instead of shooting bullets, I wouldn't really give a shit.

Altho that said, I can see some instances where I wouldn't have a problem with coppers having guns - I probably support the nuclear police being armed for example - I don't wanna risk some Al-Qaeda cunt *actually* getting a dirty bomb (and fuck knows with the media hysteria over it they know it's a decent idea from their POV).

Well I don't know anything about them, but unless they give you cancer, they use it to perve at womens tits or it finds all sorts of shit, I don't really give a fuck. I mean I think it's a good thing that you have to go through security on a plane, so why not the tube? I do actually think stopping mentalist scumbags suicide bombing is what is known as "a good thing".

To be honest, I know fuck all about them, but if they're what they sound like (like an airport metal detector scanner thing, yea?), then why on Earth, given that there *are* lunatic Islamists out there who want to murder large numbers of civilians would this be a bad thing?

Ps - if any mention of Iraq, Bush and Blair having killed more people etc. etc. is brought up in your response, you're automatically wrong and are officially an idiot.

Except their isn't a logic. If you're seriously, honestly saying that CCTV is in the same ball park as indefinite detention, then you must have something wrong in your head. Sorry mate, but if you honestly think it's some logic that leads from a load of CCTV to locking people up arbitrarily (sp?), there's no other conclusion to come to. I mean do you think we're drfiting towards fascism or some shit? Do you think the ruling class would want that? Do you think modern capitalism could operate properly under those conditions?

and contraceptive science could be use for eugenics, space technology for missiles and nanotechnology to prevent thefts. So? All technology produced under capitalism is going to be made in the interests of capital, and lots of stuff can be both harmful or beneficial depending on how it's used.

Just because I don't want CCTV cameras in my house or when I'm having a shit, doesn't mean I don't want them stopping speeding drivers or making people working shitty jobs feel safer.

Jack

You realise that such has already occured and was used against the dissent?

You realise that corporatism and the economic system it runs on is simply fascism with 'a human face'.

Fascism and capitalism are not separate systems. In fact much of capital is build on a fascist base. Up to today's varieties of imperialism. All major capitalist nations have fascist ties.

As for the question of the ruling class - don't be mistaken. Fascism requires and is built on the support of capitalist elites.

In fact, fascism is the unchecked rule of a class of the privileged, or relatively rich, in power. It is a full-scale assault on poor and working people. Parliamentary institutions are usually set aside, or so demeaned as to be meaningless. The Holocaust was after all, legal. And so are the torture camps of today made to be above the board. Elites issue direct orders, frequently through a populist leader. Any social safety net, working hour laws, labor laws; all come under legal (and extra-legal) attack. They are - especially in the US - non-existant and done away with. Violation of human rights, common. The stick replaces the carrot.

You may discard this as paranoia, but to academics of economic and political systems, it's a matter of fact. Of course if one wants to sleep at night and feel safe; it is one that can be easily ignored.

Alan

People need to think about what system they are living under, and the inescapable truth that these camera ARE used to repress the populace - in ways that are clearly articulated, and in ways that are not. To imagine otherwise is to declare yourself a resident of wonderland. Constant monitoring of the population, regardless of what the stated 'beneficial' justification is, has an effect on people that is both readily apparent, and one that is more subtle and sinister.

Why should activists and revolutionaries aspire to be macho? A true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love/compassion (quoting Che there); not by seeking revolutionary glory. Seeking a status of a martyr of dissent is not the attitude of a serious political mind.

It is painfully obvious that a great many citizens will be discouraged from political activity for fear of repercussions in their private / public life if they know they are being filmed, and their identities put on watch lists - this is not paranoia - this is recognition of reality. Look at the massive databases now being kept on anyone even remotely politically active in the USA and UK.... Look at the surveillance teams assigned to political funtions - they catalog identities, they act as agent provacateurs, and they share and store that information for future use. To think that all these monitoring activities do not have a very direct and demonstrable effect on political dissent or that it doesn't matter if it does, is ridiculous.

The filming of activists has been a tool of repression ever since it first became possible - from earlier labor struggles, to the 'red squads' of the sixties and seventies, right up to the massive collection of groups (both civilian and military) that engage in the practice today - they know it is effective, and so it continues. It is the blackest of comedies that the only ones debating whether it is important, effective in supressing dissent, or even a real issue, are those being filmed.

it's all about the state of exception. The idea being that there are times when the the state is somehow justified in asserting extraordinary and illegal power in order to maintain the status quo - the content of its role supercedes the form.

This justification is rooted in the fact that the state is constructed in the first place on the basis of armed, illegal force - which then goes on to construct a legal infrastructure, but never really falls away.

The important element of which is: the strengthening of state surveillance techniques and the present stripping away of liberal freedoms (albeit for now primarily on the terrain of radical islamism) points somewhere very unpleasant indeed. Not, indeed, towards a classical fascism but I rather expect that we are moving towards a system which shares some features with it, but on a newly sophisticated technological basis.

This is the logic referred to: the imposition of the state itself into all relationships, as mediator and condition of the relationship. In so interposing itself it constructs and reconstructs the necessity for its continued mediation.

Of course these technologies are responses to certain social malaises harmful to the flow of capital - some of them even have some regard for public safety. The problem is that in suppressing that malaise by the interpolation of state power they preclude or at least retard the sublation of those conditions.

Against capitalist war - against capitalist peace?

Too tired/hung over to make a better job of this. Fuego has said much of what I wanted to anyway.

While I'm not paranoid that Blair is planning a fascist dictatorship or something, there is also the issue of privately owned CCTV cameras (in workplaces, shops, and shopping malls, etc.) and other privately collected data (credit and loyalty card details, etc.). Much of which is used to build up a profile of shopping habits, and bombard us with junk mail. But it could also be used by insurance companies, loan companies, potential employers, etc. to turn away risky customers/employees. (Imagine you need to take out health insurance for trip overseas, but the company has access to data which says that you regularly visit the pharmacist, and so won't insure you.)

A lot of this data also comes from the sate as well. The DVLA will sell details of who owns what car, and the government also sells individual census records (with names etc. removed, but it was revealed a few years ago that these can somehow be restored -- by cross referencing with another list I guess).

I think that even the mail and telephone preference services (who are supposed to stop junk mail and cold calling) sell your details on to companies who can then decide if they want to break the voluntary rules or not.

Some of this is just inconvenient. But if you're desperate for money and can't get a loan or a job (or access to healthcare if they end up fully privatising the NHS), it is more than a nuisance.

You did write above that "I'd still rather capitalist peace to capitalist war tho. And I'd rather capitalism where people had to put up with less anti-social behaviour than more."

And I'd rather live in a capitalist society which wasn't able to gather huge amounts of information about me (whether it is used for repressive policing, or to try and sell me stuff I don't need, or not sell me stuff I do need), than one that was.

Well (to be somewhat devils advocate) wouldn't you rather that the advertising you got was tailored to what you might be interested in, rather than just endless piles of random shit you're never going to buy?