Surveillance Society
Apr. 14th, 2009 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksThe 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.
__________
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 10:06 pm (UTC)http://chasemeladies.blogspot.com/2009/04/yesterday-was-last-day-you-could-use.html
DY
no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 10:33 pm (UTC)Then there are the many areas of the country; power stations, parliament and other places, where congregating at will get you a van load of rozzers with their own handy-cams.
What else? Cowards hiding behind balaclavas, ID-less riot gear, those poofy yellow jackets hiding ID numbers.
The Met Commissioner talking up a battle afore the demo. He got it. His boys can actually read newspapers and were up for a fight.
As someone pointed out on another site, the police have to talk up the fear society so they get funding for all their toys. On returning to Northampton, after 7 years away, I can hardly sleep without some idiot in a helicopter hovering over the town all night, shining his searchlight into every garden. You'd think I lived in Watts, LA.
JayBee
All the above written by someone from the right of centre.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 07:25 pm (UTC)The Met is a fun organisation, isn't it? It gets so many things wrong, at such a basic level, that it's probably time to tear the whole organisation down and start again from scratch. "My boys are up for the fight," hee hee ... although I doubt Sir Robert Peel would be laughing. Let alone famously right-of-centre Robert Walpole.
Me, I'm a huge proponent of police helicopters -- a notably unreliable style of transport. As they disturb my sleep (Northfield has one of only two of the things for the whole of Birmingham), I can hum Ride of the Valkyries to myself as I happily contemplate members of the Filth plummeting to a grisly death.
... er ...
Well, the whole "We Are Camera" thing just reminds me of the Monty Python sketch with an island of Alan Whickers, doing nothing but filming themselves. There are worse ways to waste your time, I suppose. I wonder if Orwell ever contemplated the effect of cheap, universal technology on the world of Big Brother?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 08:31 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, I can see this as an RSS feed coming up. And I don't even piss around with RSS feeds. These buggers will suck the life out of you.
re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-16 12:06 am (UTC)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/pap_the_police/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/07/gov_photography/
"These powers apply to "designated areas", which the Met confirmed last night currently cover the whole of London, subject to review of this status on a 28-day basis." Haha, how clever.
2. It seems weird that a police force that is very keen on using CCTV tried a mini-blackout
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/little-brother.html
As was mentioned in The Times the other day, the honeymoon is over for the new commisioner and it has been a rough start,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6069868.ece?print=yes&randnum=1239840251123
Hal
Re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-16 12:57 pm (UTC)Who'd have thought that it would be the Labour Party that has eroded so much liberty for the working man.
Then again, socialists tend to be control freaks.
I bet King Knut was a member of New Labour.
Re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-16 12:59 pm (UTC)I reckon that it would no be illegal for me to take any photograph travelling from my home to Gatwick Airport.
It would also be illegal to photograph Buckingham Palace (armed forces at work) or the Changing of the Guard (lots of armed forces at work).
Had the Mumbai siege taken place in London, it would have been illegal to film any of it.
The one hope we have here is that this bad law will fall foul of Hobbes' "Authoritative Allocation Of Values" and that somehow a test case will be brought that will permit the Courts to stand up for civil liberties in the face of an increasingly authoritarian executive and its enthusiastic implementers.
One defence could be that the law is too wide-ranging and that it is only being enforced at the convenience of the police, rather than for its ostensible purpose.
PJ
Re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-16 01:00 pm (UTC)PJ
Re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-16 01:06 pm (UTC)Merely having this in print and showing it to a police officer or CSO demanding the deletion of a photograph, and explaining to them that there was a serious possibiility that they would have to explain in court their justified suspicion that you were taking a photograph that should be deleted for the above purpose, would likely put the shits up most police officers in London. hell, most of them are economic migrants anyway. Long time since I met one from London.
Re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-16 01:53 pm (UTC)Re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-18 03:20 pm (UTC)It's one of the few historical facts to enter the collective unconscious that's actually accurate (presumably). I've got a soft spot for "On Heriots and Reliefs," but then that's just me.
Meanwhile, in the unreal world David Deaton of the Statistical Reform Team (and you'll note that their Orwellian title precludes the preferable "Reform of [Government] Statistics Team") has this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/04/where_is_the_accountability_in.html) to say:
'"However", he continues, "I believe disclosure would contravene the first data protection principle, which provides that personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully. This is an absolute exemption and the Cabinet Office is not obliged to consider whether the public interest favours disclosing the information."
Disappointing, but not surprising.'
Or then again, you might point out that it is neither dis- or appointing. Neither sur- nor prising.
What it is, is absolute bollocks. A nod towards the now useless Data Protection Act, which should now be discarded, followed by The Language Of Weasels.
It's not clear to me why the man failed to put a final full stop after "This is an absolute exemption." These people are Weak, and should be Taken Down.
With God's Will, it will be done, and soon.
I'm going to leave you, James, with the job of dressing up in a turban and knocking Cameron off his bicycle with a pointy stick tipped with curare. As a public schoolboy, you know how these things work.
I shall deal with the lingering detritus of the Labour Party. I have Contacts. They have Bile.
Together, we can make this work. Then we retreat to our caves ("cavas") in Spain ("Las Espanas") and wait for reality to kick in, and for civil servants who have no command of the English language to commit seppuku.
It will be a long wait. But it will be worth it.
Re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-18 04:21 pm (UTC)Remember. These people play rugby and drink heavily subsidised beer.
On a more serious note, it's about goddamn time that our pusilanimous legislature revoked Any And All of these disgraceful "Anti-Terrorist" laws. They're all shit, legally speaking. They're all brought in on the back of a response to a single, and quite possibly unrepeatable, bombing. (Well, at least it's not on the basis that "You're not allowed to giggle at the Minister of Defence." Soon, my precious, soon ... Joseph Conrad would have a fucking fit. And he was Polish)
These things come up for "consideration" every year. They are obscene. They were obscene in the first place (1974).
As you know, I live in Birmingham, and the B'ham 6 were the first victims.
I'm waiting for one single decent half-way intelligent sensible honest god-fearing moral politician to say that, just because the Act is entitled "Prevention of Terrorism," it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to vote for it.
Yes, I know, I'll die before that happens. But that's idealism for you.
Re: Surveillance Society
Date: 2009-04-19 02:39 pm (UTC)I haven't been counting, but (and this is to ignore the notable contribution made by the Thatcher and the Major governments) there are at least a hundred significant pieces of New Labour legislation that are vulnerable to this entirely reasonable attack.
Pick the nits out of even one of those, and the entire house of cards comes tumbling down.
Hell, this would already have happened in America. I'm prepared to fess up good money to see it happen here.