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Surveillance Society
Apr. 14th, 2009 10:33 pmThe Tomlinson case at the G20 illustrated a point that I was going to write about at the weekend, but which every Guardian columnist and his wife also spotted, so I didn't bother. The point at issue here is that what the state controllers thought was a good idea (cheaper surveillance systems) has suddenly become less of a good idea for them but more of a good idea for us, because the surveillance systems have got very cheap indeed. The watchers are now the watched. The bullshit will be uncovered -- and quickly.
My joyous enthusiasm for this is virtually unconstrained. The "Big Brother" society of CCTV everywhere watching "us" has now become a force for democracy, because we can watch "them" at the same time. And even state-controlled media would be unable to stop it, because the interwebby has democratized and internationalized that as well. It's fucking marvellous.
Indeed, all of this is so obvious that I wasn't going to write about it at all, until fresh footage of another assault and unbridled illegal restriction of free movement of the populus came to light. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5154989/Met-investigates-new-claims-of-policeman-hitting-G20-woman.html)
The hilarious part of this piece is not the film of the number-concealed cop striking the woman, or the illegal restraint imposed on two people who just wanted to go home. No, the hilarious part was a comment that I had missed earlier in the week.
Well, pardon my subjective interpretation of the English language, but that doesn't strike me as a "clarification". It's a downright admission that the previous statement was totally wrong.
And, more amazingly, what on earth possessed Hardwick to make that statement in the first place? Hell, there's a CCTV camera outside my front window. To imagine that there isn't CCTV coverage somewhere of virtually everything in the Square Mile is naive in the extreme. If these are the people in charge of the IPCC, one can't be too optimistic of their competence in investigating anything.
My suspicion is that Hardwick said that there were no CCTV cameras in the area because that is what the police told him.
It's the IPCC's job to "watch the watchers", but the democratization of the surveillance society has shown what a crap job they were doing of it. Now that we, the people, can film stuff, and now that so many people are doing it that we can't all be arrested for impeding the police "in the course of their duty" or some other trumped-up charge based on the prevention of terrorism; now that the forces of authority are being brought to account by the people instead of being patted on the back by other forces of authority, we might, just might, have a society based less on fear and more on freedom.
The destruction of the "peace camp" on Bishopsgate was perhaps the biggest mistake the police made. This was a genuinely peaceful protest. It would only have been there 48 hours. But it was perfoming an invidious act; holding up the traffic! (One wonders why the executives at Thames Water haven't been put into jail many times over...) Next time, members of that protest might say to themselves "fuck it; we see where peaceful protest got us; might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb".
Even Ken Livingstone was talking of "a few bad apples", rather than accepting that the police in London have for many years been an oppressive force for the denial of civil liberty. We go where they tell us to go, when they tell us to go there, or we risk arrest. Indeed Mr Oakes was arrested on a tube train one night because he refused to move to a different tube carriage. (I know. I was there.) He hadn't broken a law. The police just wanted to empty out two carriages so that "football fans" could be herded into them. Oakes made the valid point that he would have been happy to stand in a tube carriage with football fans, being one himself, but that wasn't good enough for the police.
Today, that incident could have been filmed. Today, with luck, that kind of incident will be less likely to take place. The police haven't suddenly got "nicer". They just know now that they are more likely to get caught. And, as anny criminologist will tell you; it isn't so much the severity of a penalty that stops people breaking the law as the degree of certainty that one will be caught and punished. With luck, the G20 protests last week will indeed bring about a change in out society -- albeit not the one that the protestors were anticipating and (ironically) one where the change was brought about by the death of a man who wasn't even protesting.
He just wanted to go home.
__________
My joyous enthusiasm for this is virtually unconstrained. The "Big Brother" society of CCTV everywhere watching "us" has now become a force for democracy, because we can watch "them" at the same time. And even state-controlled media would be unable to stop it, because the interwebby has democratized and internationalized that as well. It's fucking marvellous.
Indeed, all of this is so obvious that I wasn't going to write about it at all, until fresh footage of another assault and unbridled illegal restriction of free movement of the populus came to light. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5154989/Met-investigates-new-claims-of-policeman-hitting-G20-woman.html)
The hilarious part of this piece is not the film of the number-concealed cop striking the woman, or the illegal restraint imposed on two people who just wanted to go home. No, the hilarious part was a comment that I had missed earlier in the week.
Amateur footage later emerged of the incident from a member of the public but last week Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating, said there was no CCTV footage because there were no cameras in the location where he was assaulted.
But the IPCC yesterday issued a "clarification" that Mr Hardwick's assertion "may not be accurate" and that there were indeed cameras covering the area.
Well, pardon my subjective interpretation of the English language, but that doesn't strike me as a "clarification". It's a downright admission that the previous statement was totally wrong.
And, more amazingly, what on earth possessed Hardwick to make that statement in the first place? Hell, there's a CCTV camera outside my front window. To imagine that there isn't CCTV coverage somewhere of virtually everything in the Square Mile is naive in the extreme. If these are the people in charge of the IPCC, one can't be too optimistic of their competence in investigating anything.
My suspicion is that Hardwick said that there were no CCTV cameras in the area because that is what the police told him.
It's the IPCC's job to "watch the watchers", but the democratization of the surveillance society has shown what a crap job they were doing of it. Now that we, the people, can film stuff, and now that so many people are doing it that we can't all be arrested for impeding the police "in the course of their duty" or some other trumped-up charge based on the prevention of terrorism; now that the forces of authority are being brought to account by the people instead of being patted on the back by other forces of authority, we might, just might, have a society based less on fear and more on freedom.
The destruction of the "peace camp" on Bishopsgate was perhaps the biggest mistake the police made. This was a genuinely peaceful protest. It would only have been there 48 hours. But it was perfoming an invidious act; holding up the traffic! (One wonders why the executives at Thames Water haven't been put into jail many times over...) Next time, members of that protest might say to themselves "fuck it; we see where peaceful protest got us; might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb".
Even Ken Livingstone was talking of "a few bad apples", rather than accepting that the police in London have for many years been an oppressive force for the denial of civil liberty. We go where they tell us to go, when they tell us to go there, or we risk arrest. Indeed Mr Oakes was arrested on a tube train one night because he refused to move to a different tube carriage. (I know. I was there.) He hadn't broken a law. The police just wanted to empty out two carriages so that "football fans" could be herded into them. Oakes made the valid point that he would have been happy to stand in a tube carriage with football fans, being one himself, but that wasn't good enough for the police.
Today, that incident could have been filmed. Today, with luck, that kind of incident will be less likely to take place. The police haven't suddenly got "nicer". They just know now that they are more likely to get caught. And, as anny criminologist will tell you; it isn't so much the severity of a penalty that stops people breaking the law as the degree of certainty that one will be caught and punished. With luck, the G20 protests last week will indeed bring about a change in out society -- albeit not the one that the protestors were anticipating and (ironically) one where the change was brought about by the death of a man who wasn't even protesting.
He just wanted to go home.
__________
