Charles Farrier
Taxi Surveillance Cameras and The Continuing Decay of Privacy
Where to mate? 1984 please.
“You lookin’ at me?” —Travis Bickle (performed by Robert De Niro), Taxi Driver (1976)
The use of surveillance cameras in taxis that record both sound and images hit the headlines last week, when it emerged that the City Council of the historic English city of Oxford was making them compulsory for all local private hire vehicles [1]. Many commentators were shocked by the depths to which the surveillance society had now stooped but few spotted that this phenomenon has been around for over a decade, and not just in the UK.
CCTV in taxis is a worldwide development. The globalised surveillance industrial complex offers one-solution-fits-all products regardless of regional differences or actual need. Wherever taxi cameras have been introduced the measure has courted controversy and time and time again privacy laws around the world have seemingly been unable to restrain this addition to the surveillance panoply. It is through such…
This Vehicle Registration Plate Surveillance System Is a Warning to Us All
No CCTV has teamed up with Privacy International and Big Brother Watch to challenge the legality of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) [also known as ALPR in North America] camera network in the UK. A complaint has been sent to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) against a so-called ANPR “Ring of Steel” that is being constructed around the town of Royston in Hertfordshire — but for Royston read any town in the UK.
Background
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has constructed a network of cameras across the country without any public or parliamentary debate. These cameras record the number plate of each and every vehicle that passes, sometimes taking a photograph of the car and its occupants. The number plate is then compared to a “hotlist” of vehicles of interest, and whether or not the plate is on that list (ie a “hit”), all information gathered is stored for between two and…
Back to the Future: UK CCTV Debate Stuck in Time Loop
Imagine if you had a time machine and you could travel back to the UK in the 1990s. Back then there was a banking crisis [1], a Conservative government and CCTV cameras were being put up all over the UK. So what’s changed over the last 20 years?
With regards to political debate and public awareness of the issues surrounding surveillance cameras it seems very little. Come with us now on a journey of discovery as we leap backwards and forwards in time to present the Then and the Now of CCTV in the UK.
A Code of Practice for CCTV: NOW
One of the “new” ideas touted by the government in 2011 is a Code of Practice for surveillance cameras. On 27th June a Written Answer from the Home Office was published in response to a question about the government’s policy on CCTV [2]:
Julie Hilling: To ask the Secretary of State for…
The Freedom Committee, CCTV / ANPR and the Manufacture of Consent
Minister demonstrates high trouser look to Coaker.
The UK is generally acknowledged to be the world leader in camera surveillance. People from around the world often ask how this has come about. Currently making its way through the UK parliament is a piece of legislation called The Protection of Freedoms Bill – sounds good until you read it, not least when it comes to its take on CCTV. The Committee tasked to oversee and scrutinise the Bill demonstrates how an uninformed public can be hoodwinked into accepting the ever expanding surveillance state around them.
On Tuesday 26th April the Protection of Freedoms Bill continued its passage through the House of Commons when a committee of MPs discussed the surveillance cameras portion of the Bill [1]. Back in March No CCTV created a list of dodgy phrases to look out for at the 2nd Reading of the Bill, which could be used to…
Exposing Naked Scanners In The EU And Beyond – Again
Image from FlyWithDignity.org
One year on from the fast tracking of digital strip searches and the hysteria over the “pants incident” [1], the push for the use of naked scanners continues. Whilst naked scanners have not been front page news for some time, the issue, like many others the mainstream media choose to ignore, forges ahead unexposed.
The delayed EU Commission green paper
In June 2010, the European Commission finally published a green paper on the use of naked scanners at EU airports [2] — a paper that was originally promised back in 2008! The Commission’s green paper refers to naked scanners as “Security Scanners” in an attempt to play down the intrusive nature of the technology and highlight the supposed security benefits.
The Commission presents the all too common argument at the EU level — that it is inevitable that scanners will be introduced, so what we need is European Regulation to create…
BrumiLeaks, CCTV and the Attempted Murder of Democracy
Brummie: a native of the British city of Birmingham.
— Oxford English Dictionary
Whilst the WikiLeaks founder was languishing in a prison cell in London, a storm was brewing in England’s second largest city Birmingham, where leaked emails reveal the lengths that advocates of surveillance cameras will go to further their agenda. The BrumiLeaks may appear less controversial than the WikiLeaks that have dominated mainstream headlines in recent weeks, but they do more to lift the lid on just how the surveillance state continues its steady creep forward and why eternal vigilance is required by freedom loving citizens. A perfect example of what is happening the world over – for Birmingham read a town near you.
The Birmingham story so far …
Last month Birmingham City Council was named and shamed as the UK local authority that had spent the most on surveillance cameras between 2007 and 2010 [1]. The council and police in Birmingham…
What Is The True Cost Of CCTV?
The release of Big Brother Watch’s latest report, ‘The Price is Wrong – The cost of CCTV surveillance in the United Kingdom’ [1] reiterates that CCTV cameras are a massive waste of money. The report shows that local authorities in the UK spent nearly £315 million of taxpayers money on CCTV in just the last three years. Top of the surveillance spending chart is Birmingham Council who managed to pour £10,476,874 into spy cameras between 2007 and 2010!
| Rank | Council | Total Spend |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Birmingham | £10,476,874.00 |
| 2 | Sandwell | £5,355,744.00 |
| 3 | Leeds | £3,839,675.00 |
| 4 | City of Edinburgh | £3,600,560.00 |
| 5 | Hounslow | £3,573,186.45 |
| 6 | Lambeth | £3,431,301.00 |
| 7 | Manchester | £3,347,310.00 |
| 8 | Enfield | £3,141,295.00 |
| 9 | Barnet | £3,119,020.00 |
| 10 | Barking and Dagenham | £3,090,000.00 |
Birmingham – hey big spender!
Birmingham City Council has been the subject of much CCTV controversy this year as it tried to sneak hundreds of CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras into leafy Birmingham suburbs as part of a project named ‘Project Champion’. Following a successful local campaign against the cameras [2] the council and the police…
Internet Eyes Citizen Spy Game – The New Stasi?
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it…
- Judge Learned Hand, ‘The Spirit of Liberty’ speech (1944)
The launch of Internet Eyes on 4th October (as part of a three month trial) marks another disturbing chapter in Britain’s surveillance society.
In the autumn of 2009 Internet Eyes Limited hit the headlines when they announced their desire to launch a CCTV game that they were keen to claim was not a game. Private individuals would subscribe to private camera feeds connected to the internet and spy on people going about their business, with a cash prize each month for the person who reports the most infringements. The game is now being launched as part of a three month trial at 12 shops (including Costcutter and Spar franchises) in towns including Reading, Wokingham and Newton Abbott.
The UK’s Information Commissioner has put…
Speed Cameras, ANPR and Project Columbus
Photo: Kaihsu Ta (CC)
Photo: Kaihsu Ta (CC)
- The expansion of automated checkpoints around the UK
Data Protection expert Chris Pounder of Amberhawk Training[1] has warned that moves by UK local authorities to remove speed cameras could lead to an increase in Automatic Number Plate Recognition or ANPR cameras. In a recent blog post ‘Data Protection and surveillance: swapping the speed camera for ANPR?’[2] Pounder suggests that as speed cameras are removed, more accidents could occur so that over time, there will be increased public pressure to do something to counter the rising accident rate, and he says: “ANPR installations (which only need a few cameras) will be the technological fix of choice”. Pounder goes on:
In this way, specific surveillance of an accident black spot by a speed camera (which only captures the image of speeding cars breaking the law) is replaced by general surveillance of all vehicles passing the cameras (where records of date,…
Gordon Brown’s UK Election Pledge – More CCTV!
This week the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, made it clear that he sees the expansion of the UK surveillance camera network as a vote winner in the coming general election [1]. Brown was in Reading delivering a speech on ‘crime and anti-social behaviour’, he said [2]:
CCTV and DNA are crucial.
There are of course some who think CCTV is “excessive”, but they probably don’t have to walk home or take the night bus on their own at the end of a night out. For the rest of us, for ordinary hard working, decent people, the evidence is clear: CCTV reduces the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour.
That is why this government has funded CCTV in nearly 700 town centre schemes over the last decade — and why in the coming months we are bringing in a new power for people to petition their local authority for more CCTV, with the authority having a duty to respond.
Now the opposition parties have campaigned against CCTV — our support for CCTV will be on the ballet paper at any coming election.
CCTV Drones: Policing By Remote Control
The secret development of CCTV UAVs or drones represents yet another example of Administrative Lawlessness now evident the world over as civil liberties are squandered.
All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
this our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue
A recent Guardian newspaper article (’CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones’, 23rd January 2010[1]) reveals plans to use surveillance drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to spy on UK citizens. The project, called the South Coast Partnership, sees arms manufacturer BAE Systems teaming up with a “consortium of government agencies led by Kent police”.
The Guardian report states that:
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The Home Office’s ‘Science and Innovation Strategy 2009–12′ [2], published last year, confirms that the UK government has been exploring the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a policing “tool”…
Naked Scanners, Naked CCTV And Barefaced Lies
How digital strip searches got fast tracked…
Back in 2002 when biometric ID cards were first being suggested by UK politicians many of those of us that opposed their introduction pointed out that fingerprinting is associated with criminal suspects and that treating citizens like criminals is unacceptable in a free society. Now the proposed digital strip searching of airline passengers in the UK raises similar concerns. The UK government is suggesting that passengers should stand with their hands up and submit to a scanning technology that reveals their naked body to airport security staff. If the public submits to this demand and accepts this technology then it raises serious concerns about people’s understanding of what privacy and freedom are and will not bode well for the future. It is up to the people of this country to take a stand and to say no to digital strip searches.
The pants incident
The current…
