Orwellian infrastructure in place
Bookworm on May 06 2008 at 8:05 am | Filed under: Britain, England
In Britain, it’s impossible to go anywhere without being spied upon. England has spend billions of pounds setting up the densest CCTV (close circuit TV) network in the world. Or perhaps I should say in the semi-free world, because I’d go odds that North Korea has a pretty good CCTV network too.
The goal behind all this spying was supposed to be crime reduction, with the thinking being that a perpetually watched population is an honest population. It turns out, though, that being spied upon not only doesn’t improve people’s honesty, it also doesn’t improve law enforcement’s ability either to prevent or prosecute crimes:
Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Brits that the better infrastructure in which to have invested would have been a cultural and moral one: It would have started with abandoning multi-culti PC pap in favor of a vision of Brits as a unified people, regardless of country of origin. Then, one would layer over that a second vision of this unified people enjoying a shared Judeo-Christian value system, not a government welfare values system. If Britain had done that for the past decade or so, it might have ended up with a population in which people work hard and respect each other enough that, for the most part, they’re honest.
As it is, Brits now have a situation in which the government can’t protect them from each other, but it has positioned itself perfectly to spy on them in a way that would have made the rulers of George Orwell’s Oceania proud. I don’t know about you, but I’d be very unhappy living in a nation where the government never takes its eyes off me. After all this year’s ostensibly beneficent and manifestly inept government may be next year’s totalitarian tyrant.
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8 Responses to “Orwellian infrastructure in place”
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Bookworm -
I agree with you.
Now, who out there is willing to bet that the British will take the cameras down since they are ineffective?
Deana
Hello Bookworm,
You said, “I’d be very unhappy living in a nation where the government never takes its eyes off me.”
Perhaps you’ve noticed that CCTV cameras are being erected in every major US cities for the past decade or so. Driving in Los Angeles and Houston, I constantly see cameras on the corners of intersections, on the side of buildings, on lampposts, inside stores, etc.
In fact, without so much as a vote, we, Americans are going there fairly quickly as well. It certainly hasn’t become as extensive as Britain and we haven’t yet installed loud speakers for pseudo-cops to tell us what to do, but we’re well on our way. Look at Britain.
This can be our future. And unlike Britain, there is no far off wealthy America to slow the degradation.
This is a point I’ve been trying to get across on my blog and other blogs for years now, and I hope someone is listening. Tony Blair, in a spasm of envy at the end of the 1990’s, was Britain’s executioner. He destroyed everything that made Britain Britain, and he did it in the name of “modernization”.
This is the course that our liberals want to take us. This is also the course that our conservatives encouraged to happen through notions of “efficiency” and “globalization free trade”.
There is now a clear political division here in America. There are the Nationalists, and there are Globalist. The leaders of both our parties are Globalists and many of the rank and file in both parties are Nationalists.
Again, if we go there, we will probably descend much faster than Britain into cultural dissolution. In many ways, America has propped up Britain’s economy and her stature throughout the world simply through association with America. We won’t have such luxury if and/or when our time comes.
Bill O’Reilly and other conservatives call this the “Culture War”. Others call it, “Jesus Land” versus “Secular Progressives.” Whatever you want to call it, the dynamic is the push/ pull of Globalism and Nationalism.
Should the Globalists win out, Britain cubed will be our fate. It is clear that many of our leaders and our billionaires have already sold us out and are elbowing each other for a place in a unified Global world.
(By the way, this is essentially why I don’t consider myself a Republican and a conservative. I have leanings toward the conservative platforms, but there are many things that Republicans and conservatives believe that I find untenable for myself.)
Early in my career, I worked for a manufacturing company that believed in keeping all of its employees under constant observation, whether by security cameras or one-way mirrors. The plant workers turned it into a game of how to beat the system.
You could not imagine the level of equipment sabotage that the company endured day-in, day-out. Needless to say, the relationship between employees (citizens) and management (state) was one marked by hostility and mutual distrust.
I didn’t know that, Thomas. In my cozy little suburb, we don’t seem to be under surveillance, and it’s been a long time since I’ve spent any meaningful time in a major American urban area. In light of the significant failure of Britain’s CCTV exercise, Americans might start wanting to get exercised about the scrutiny under which they’re being placed. We’re used to it when we go into a store — private enterprise can do what it wants to stem its losses — but it’s scary when government does it. And as Deanna said, I’m sure the British government is not going to cover those lenses now that the ostensible reason for this experiment in spying has failed.
Hello Bookworm,
Just to give you an illustration of how pervasive it is in my neck of the woods, if one can call Southern California a wooded area, I can drive from my home to my workplace and under constant surveillance.
I drive from my home to the nearest major intersection. There’s a camera there. I drive along a major thoroughfare and am observed by cameras along the sides of buildings, banks, lampposts, until I reach another intersection.
There is another camera there that mails the local denizens happy traffic tickets should we roll through the happy red light. There are other cameras along intersections that nothing but observe.
Admittedly, there are gaps in this and it’s not completely continuous, but with the help of private security cameras, it’s close enough.
My brother when he visited me last year laughed and said people over here are “messed up” for doing that. Houston wouldn’t do something like this.
As of March of this year in one of visits back home, CCTV cameras were present at most major intersections and some were present in minor intersections. My family doesn’t even live in the heart of the city. They live in what used to be the “boonies” before it was developed these past three years. When I pointed out to him that Houston is rapidly catching up with LA for the number of CCTV’s, he just shrugged and said essentially, “What can you do ’bout it?”
Just to provide you with another illustration, I pointed out to a co-worker of mine that lives just a block away from Watts, a pretty dangerous and tough area of town, that these CCTV’s could steal away our liberties if we don’t watch it. He, too, scoffed and said that the characters down in Watts would never take it laying down. They’d probably shoot at the CCTV’s, he said.
As of this point, he reported to me that more CCTV’s have popped up around the Watts area, and to this date, none of them have been torn down.
The thing that gets me is that there wasn’t even a debate or a discussion. No national referendum. No local, state or federal vote on this. They just popped up one day, and we’ve accepted them. Albeit, they are less conspicuous that in true Orwellian fashion, like Britain, but I find it discomforting that we are being ask to get accustomed to things we didn’t vote on.
I argued on my blog that being under the tyranny of constant observation through CCTV’s and Google is like the Panopticon used in prisons. Perhaps, this is an overstatement to underline a point, but it sure hits my emotions that way.
Thomas - turn your question around!
Forget the CCTVs - how much of the crap that surrounds you, me - all of us - DID you have a chance to discuss, debate, or vote on?
I find myself saying, at least two or three times a week: “who the hell told them they could do THAT?”
Don’t you?
jj,
Yes, I find myself saying that a whole lot, but none of it is more salient than on the technological end. CCTV’s are just one facet of this.
I don’t know why it is but I feel more threatened by the high tech end of things. I’m appalled at the overt political propaganda being broadcasted on all levels of society.
I’m appalled at how the 8 hour workday vanished without anyone’s consent.
I’m appalled how Judeo-Christian culture of the West is being erased from the minds and hearts of its inhabitants as surely as the communist re-writes of history. It’s only moving at a slower trajectory, which, of course, makes it more subtle and insidious (I don’t think the Russians in Russia remember who Trotsky was, or who was in governed in the intermediate phase between the fall of the Russian Czar and the Bolshevik takeover. Isn’t funny how most younger Brits believe that Winston Churchill is a myth not a real person? Makes you wonder how Roosevelt and Reagan are going to be remembered forty years from now…).
I’m appalled that our Congressmen having a lower turnover rate than the Soviet Poliburo. I’m appalled that our Congressmen and Senators have lifetime healthcare after leaving office and are given staffs paid for by our tax dollars. I’m appalled at how they also become multi-millionaires after leaving office because they suddenly sat on the board of directors of companies they granted contracts to while serving as our representatives… this is also a trend for our generals (see Colin Powell).
I’m appalled at many things overtaking our world and feel at times that the world is passing me by despite being at the tender age of 29.
But it’s the technological aspect of the modern world that seems to directly impact my life, and I see it more; it’s less abstract to me. What also makes CCTV’s a bit more appalling to me is that our government is using our tax dollars to spy on us. It just seems more duplicitous than usual to me, although I do acknowledge that this is objectively just one more out of legions of appalling trends.
Unmanned Planes Will Soon Be Monitoring US Cities By Air
Coming to a city near you.
http://tinyurl.com/4dl7w3