People of Great Britain, I hope you're not sleeping on this. Forget the slippery slope, this is the cliff.
We are the most survillienced nation, the population the most docile. That is one of the reasons I moved away, no one cares about this stuff, all they want is TV and quite often dole money. Let the filter roll out!
Of course there are exceptions, but nowhere near enough to make a real difference. The Government in England gets what it wants no matter what.
EDIT: I mean England, from my travels the other UK countries do not seem to have the same attitude as England does.
A more recent study a couple of years ago put the number closer to 2 million, about 90% of which are privately owned. A large number of privately owned, non-centralised security cameras are not a threat to me in any way. If the government started networking private security for monitoring by the government, /that/ would be the action that would get people (and private companies) up in arms.
Other recent government aggression, such as suspicionless stop and searches, extended detention for terrorism offences etc. were successfully challenged in the European court of humans rights within a few years. I've seen a pattern of worrying things slipping passed a sleepwalking public, then reverted later when it comes to light.
Apart from all that, this headline in particular is really inaccurate. There was no quote as strong as the subject, but the closest thing is that the PM said they were going to 'block sites' related to extremeism. This isn't a 'filter', which implies it's something automated that affects all internet activity.
The internet surveillance under RIPA /is/ genuinely frightening, but that isn't unique to the UK.
That sounds very much like the the Internet Watch Foundation's filter list, which was originally implemented to block access to child abuse. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_sys...)
There has been at least one case of that list accidentally blocking access to Wikipedia after an over-zealous block took out the entire domain instead of a single page, and there's no reason to believe that it couldn't be used to block far more content if the political will were there.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/18/cctv_shoplifters/
Hey, they just need to suspect you and you're all over their web site. No need for any actual proof or any inconvenience stuff like an actual conviction.
Many UK retailers already share CCTV between each other and many operate central monitoring hubs for facial recognition of 'undesirables' - people convicted of shoplifting or people the police have asked them to look for.
Here, from guess where, parliament's site, is a paper explaining lots of the UK technology in use in 2002 :
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/POST-PN-175.pdf
Have a look at the part about Newham in London using automatic facial recognition.
Are you serious about not being worried ?
I take it you didn't include the rest of the UK because of the significant number of people in Scotland and Northern Ireland who be quite happy to leave the UK? :-)
[Note that I said "significant number" rather than "majority" - the Scottish independence vote is still nearly a year away]
PS - Apologies to the Welsh for my lack of knowledge as to your feelings about membership of the UK
I've seen nothing which indicates the Scottish electorate believes this is any more of an important issue than people elsewhere in the UK.
The idea that intrusion into privacy will fade away with Scottish independence is just in line with the attitude that things in general will magically get better as a result.
It's possible that the SNP have different attitudes, which they would bring with them into independence, but they have not taken a public stand on the issue, and of course they have no track record either way because the devolved government does not have power in that area.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/gchq-fears-call-for-assurances-...
[NB I am not an SNP supporter, although I am in favour of Scottish independence]
If a politician actually wanted something to change, I think they'd write a more focussed letter, with actual demands for things to change - eg how long data should be stored, independent inquiries, codified powers, public reporting of statistics on surveillance, etc.
We are? I hope you have a better source for that than yelling something about CCTV and 1984 before running away (which is the extent to which most people can make the argument).
I do agree with the rest. Apathy is the name of the game here.
Also when I was there only 5 years ago they started to build cameras that could speak to people on the street to issue fines on the spot for littering or being out of school, remotely.
Also road cameras were being deployed that issued automatic fines if the driver was eating or drinking in the car.
I have never seen that level of surveillance anywhere else in the world.
I've lived in London in 13 years, and frankly I've not seen much more signs of surveillance here than in any other large city I've visited.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jun/26/politics.u...
> "We live in a unique time in our society: the cameras are everywhere, and we can still see them. Ten years ago, cameras were much rarer than they are today. And in 10 years, they'll be so small you won't even notice them."
I'm agnostic on whether the UK is much worse than anywhere else in the developed world. But the main thing I've learned from the recent revelations is that what I can see by looking around me is a very small part of what goes on.
I have never heard of this, and never seen anything like it. It sounds like a half-baked tabloid story. Where did you see these cameras?
Any spying on citizens in the UK is universal - the component countries do not make a difference to that in any way. CCTV, number plate cameras etc. are all present and operate universal surveillance throughout the UK. Nowhere is there any sizeable objection to it - especially since "only people with something to hide would object to the monitoring".
UK residents would do well to heed the words of Benjamin Franklin :
"They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
Perhaps we would all benefit from remembering the US Founding Fathers who had railed against the rot of the UK by 1776 - it is amazing how much resonance their words have today and how much their meaning has been lost even to Americans who should know better.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/feb/19/ukcrime-surveillan...
CCTV fails to reduce crime:
Private surveillance not state surveillance.
If that is true, then surely we need protection from 'extremism' because we are so easily lead. ;)
"all they want is TV and quite often dole money."
Please, take your small mind elsewhere.
I admit it is from my own observations and I may have missed all the good apples.
There are areas of the UK which have high proportion of people on the dole, but it's a tiny minority. Please don't tar us all with the same brush.
Elections are a fig-leaf to give a semblance of legitimacy -- the politicians approved by the democratic process are little more than glorified PR spokespeople, whose nominal power is largely illusory; undermined and diverted by innumerable tricks motivated by callow mendacity and the insurmountable complexity of the parasitic institutions that they front: The vast majority of governmental power is unseen, unscrutinised, unelected and largely unaccountable. In most forms, government is a highly-evolved form of the protection scams run by organized criminals, and whilst hard-working and well-meaning public servants certainly do exist, my personal experience is that cynicism and greed rules the day as one approaches the more elevated levels of seniority.
So when I say that we are beat, I mean it. We are never EVER going to change this system. These guys may be corrupt as hell; evil in a "unwitting", petty, careless and banal sort of way, but there is nothing that the rest of us can do about it. We have to acknowledge that they have won the game, and that we are beaten. Our purpose in life is now to shine and polish their boots and egos in equal measure: To make sure that their coffers are full and that their jobs are secure; that their mistresses and personal vices remain secret, and that their ability to moralise, preach and generally look down on the plebeian masses remains unimpeded; to grow their ability to exercise arbitrary personal power, and to make them more secure in their roost.
This is not a conspiracy theory, because there is no explicit conspiracy to be seen, just the unrelenting grind of universally flawed human nature.
UK....achem it's even in your name,... king----dom!