Mind How You Walk - It Could Be A Crime

Via telegraph.co.uk -

Later today, the Commons home affairs select committee will announce it is to conduct an inquiry into the growth of surveillance in Britain. It is tempting to say this is not before time, but it is probably too late if the aim is to have any influence over policy.

We are already a "surveillance society". We are, for the time being, fortunate that the full potential for its abuse is constrained by the pluralist democracy in which we live. However, we do not have to look back very far in history to imagine the use to which such snooping could be put.

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I have no doubt that our political masters believe the rapid expansion of CCTV cameras, for instance, is good for us. Indeed, that would be the view of most people, who seem happy with the cameras.

It stands to reason that if you have a camera trained on a shopping centre, a car park, a hotel lobby or a bus stop, we must be safer.

Well, actually, it does not follow at all. One problem is that cameras take the place of other forms of crime prevention, such as more police or better street lighting.

You might feel safer and the mugger may well think twice before striking if he thinks a CCTV camera is about. But they can engender complacency; and if cameras are so effective in preventing crime, why have the numbers of town-centre assaults and robberies shot up even as CCTV has mushroomed?

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Why not go the whole hog and have microphones attached to cameras or embedded in street lights? The Dutch have pioneered a system that recognises aggressive sounds, without actually eavesdropping on conversations (perish the thought).

My favourite is automatic gait recognition. This identifies people by the way they walk and the Government has asked Ministry of Defence scientists to develop it for widespread use.

Cameras are programmed to pick up on a particular gait, thereby making it impossible for a suspect to escape by covering his face. Even Orwell did not come up with "gaitcrime".

It is right that the home affairs select committee should look at this, although it is hard to see what it can do about it. We already have close to five million CCTV cameras, which is one fifth of the world's total.

The average Londoner might be monitored by 300 CCTV cameras a day. They are not going to be switched off, merely made more sophisticated.

But the committee can do one thing and that is alert the country to the potential dangers of putting all this surveillance together - the CCTV, DNA, ID card, radio-frequency identification, citizens' database - and linking it up with the rest of the information held on us.

Whatever can be said for the value of any one of these, it is the combination that makes me feel uneasy. I just hope it doesn't show on my face.