Big Brother Nation: 1 Camera for Every 14 People in the UK

Originally posted by antar
Eh hemm, not all Americans as a matter of fact most I know do not live in "fear" of terror. You watch far too much public acess TV. That is why you think that the people of the UK do not live in a police state but there are intrusive camereas on you 24 seven in the cities. That is not freedom to me. I realize that you have no choice but to move forward with your lives, thats all any of us can do.

Which one of us are you talking to?
I serious do not know.


Anyways, for the record, I do not watch public access TV, nor do I really
watch TV alot in general.
The UK does not fit the definition of a police state, therefore it is not a
police state, I'm not saying that all the policies are not in some way
reminiscent of one, but it simply does not fit the definition.

You give up your outer freedom of privacy whenever you go into public
as it is, so this does not really infringe on freedom.

Out of all the camera in the UK, you'll find that about 5% of them are government controlled. All the other cameras are privately owned, even the speed cameras and motorway cameras are all owned and operated by separate company's out with the government and the remaining government controlled cameras are actually operated by the local councils and not the government as a whole. Then of course almost all cameras in the UK are all in London anyway, if you want to blame someone about it blame the London council.

I find this disgusting, but after talking to a Scottish man in ATS chat apparently those in the UK do not find this the least bit intrusive.

It is the beginning, imo, of the slow decline and ultimate failure of their society.

PS. Private public survaliance is still used by the government

Inside a shop I understand and expect. Not at street corners and such.

[edit on 4/30/2007 by Rockpuck]

Rockpuck it all depends where you live. Where I live you could add up all the cameras in the two main attractions where I live (a shopping center and an leisure center) and the number of camera operated by the local government would be a tiny fraction in comparison. Theres literally only a handful of local government controlled cameras in the area where I live and most of them are to watch busy roads and public buildings.

I do agree the use of cameras by the government is increasing at an alarming rate only a few years ago there were only a couple of camera watching public buildings, now more are popping up but the media are not telling people the facts, there making people think all the cameras are controlled by the government and that there spying on you when in reality almost all the cameras in the entire country and privately owned by businesses to protect car parks and shops.

Its amazing if the majority of UK do not find this intrusive if thats in fact the case. It means that the social programming has worked and the agenda of monitoring may continue unabated in the UK. To me its kinda common sense to understand the problems with cameras everywhere. Its all about infrastructure. Once cameras are in place with the publics consent, then the full infrastructure (ie more cameras, cameras that bark orders to you etc) may be implemented.

In the beginning it may be for crime abatement, prevention etc. Once the infrastructure is complete, that kind of power of a system is just too hard for the corrupt to resist it. Facial recognition, tracking of, at first suspected people, then later a large majority of people will be tracked, all via cameras and other devices.

Eventually all the bad systems will be centralized, that is cameras, scanners, id cards, RFID, automobiles and the drivers etc. The state government and/or military will know everyones every move. Why is this bad? Lets say your govenment that you really love right now gets really corrupt and the people want to oust the gov't. Kinda harder now in a controlled police state now isn't it? And to think the people actually approved it all is icing on the cake.

Yeah really, there are no use for cameras at a street corner.

So it seems that BB will expand from major citys, such as London, into the smaller, less inhabited citys. But it will come, unless someone stands up and resists.

I can't believe how many people fall for the "oh, it's just to reduce crime and terrorism" ploy... I guess it doesn't hit you until you can see past the lies.

Of course, its only a natural progression. If the people, not only in the UK, but anywhere, are for it or at the least don't make too much of a fuss about then it will spread. One thing for sure, if 1 camera out of 14 is bad, do you think that it will increase or decrease in the near future? Of course it will increase unless issues over it develop.

One thing I don't get is the Brits actually showed disapproval of the ID card, and it helped slow the push, but did not make issue of the cameras everywhere.

Do I need to quote my own post? I must be the invisible man today. ITS NOT 1 IN 14.

To quote myself.

the media are not telling people the facts, there making people think all the cameras are controlled by the government and that there spying on you when in reality almost all the cameras in the entire country and privately owned by businesses to protect car parks and shops.

Originally posted by Edn
the media are not telling people the facts, there making people think all the cameras are controlled by the government and that there spying on you when in reality almost all the cameras in the entire country and privately owned by businesses to protect car parks and shops.

Do you have a source for your information or is this just your best guess?

Its an actuate guess, I should know, I do live in Scotland you know. I could take the day off if you like and count every camera in my area, it will come out as I said.

The majority of local council controlled cameras are in 3 main locations, Public buildings (inside & outside), public service buildings ( police stations, fire stations, hospitals, etc.) and a few busy roads.

There are also cameras on the motorways (new I might add, and this is where I agree with you) but they are not controlled by the local council there operated by separate company's and I believe there speeding cameras (times you from one camera to the other then fines you) but thats another topic.

The remaining and majority of cameras are all privately owned by small businesses or as I mentioned large shopping centers with cameras both inside and watching car parks.

When it comes down to it there are only a handful of cameras that could actually be used to watch people and the problem with that is there all operated by the local councils not the government. To have any usefulness in spying on people the camera would need to by run by the government and not the local council.

London (and possibly England as a whole) is a different story, London its self it like its own country, its population is bigger than all of Scotland put together. Its also where I would agree that there are a lot more cameras in London which sole purpose it to watch people on the streets.

But what im trying to say is 1 in 14 is not correct. Maybe its 1 in 14 in London but not for the rest of the country, and maybe no ones is making much of a fuss over it because of what I said, there just aren't that many camera operated by the government as the papers are suggesting to people.

Originally posted by Edn

When it comes down to it there are only a handful of cameras that could actually be used to watch people

Cmon now a 'handful' of cameras, that a line the politicians use I think.
We are not limiting our discussion to Scotland only, we're talking about all of the UK.


[edit on 30-4-2007 by greatlakes]

Oh - Hi people in America who seem to know more about Britain than us Brits do!

If you knew anything about the cameras in the UK you would know they were born out of the need to watch city centres and the like to try and prevent the terrorist atrocities of the IRA (you remember them? they were blowing up city centres in the UK before you guys understood what terrorism was!)

Most of the cameras are referred to are privately owned and for security purposes, but those that are run by the local authorities and the police are there to make up for the fact that our Police Forces are generally underfunded and tied up in red tape, which removes officers from the streets and means that we need another means of seeing things, ID'ing and then providing evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service who are notoriously reluctant to put people on trial without definate evidence these days.

As someone else in another thread pointed out, calling the UK a police state when teenagers and war veterans are being visited by the Secret Service and detained/ID'd and recorded in the US for criticising the President is kinda rich, don't you think?

So heres a suggestion, let us Brits worry about avoiding speed cameras and take a look in your own back yards?

the paranoia of some US citizens amazes me Britain is not a police state to suggest so is laughable, our problem is a lack of a police presence on the streets due to government ineptitude it may surprise you to know that the vast majority of law abiding folk here feel much safer especially at night to know that the cameras are there. I live in a medium sized town in the north and our local councilors had to campaign for funding to have town centre cams installed, which incidentally are staffed by council employees not police, Britain is not like America we have a big anti social problem from litter louts to drunken louts which is totally out of control compared to other nations, the cams are helping to redress the balance, once we learn to bring back discipline of our young without the political correct brigade sticking their noses in all the time then we will all feel better. the crazy thing is you don't feel safe if you have cameras but you think your school kids should carry guns to college for their safety in case there's another disgruntled pupil on the loose with an uzi in his waistband

Um what kind of police state is it where 13 year olds can openly flaunt the law and spit in a cops face as there doing it. The cameras would be fine if they actually helped catch the low life criminals running around. But there just a sop to try and reassure the public because there are no actual police on the streets.

Face recognition and tracking....thats a laugh when a thug can beat a guy senseless on a saturday night in some city centre, turn and bow to the camera and they still can't bring a prosecution due to insufficient evidence.

It's not just the cameras in London that you have to worry about if you live there. And as for ID cards for tracking your every move: it will happen. The other slightly less obvious tracking device people are carrying (in London and quite a few other cities around the world) is the Oyster. I don't know if you guys across the pond have something similar it's a card for paying for travel on buses/underground systems.

In Hong Kong it's called an Octopus and in a recent case involving a policeman doing a bank job about six years ago. They showed that his Octopus had been in the area of the bank 30 mins before it was robbed Via a bus and then left the area shortly after the bank was robbed.

Ok in all fairness they would have caught the bad guy had he not been shot last year, but the fact remains that from something as simple as a travel card they could pull records from six years ago.

No matter that you don't want an ID card and that you have 15'000 baseball caps and hundreds of fantastically coloured wigs to hide from the cameras. Before you know it the government is imploying the all new "Breath Trapper" Open your mouth and they know who and where you are.

we'v allowed our society to disintegrate we don't support the idea of the family we encourage unmarried mothers by suplying every financial need they want, we allow uneducated youth to languish on benefits, whilst bringing in hordes of migrant workers to fill jobs that have no takers, we allow infant school children to verbally and physically attack teachers ( and then wonder why they can't recruit staff) we allow people to litter our streets with fast food wrappers our local McDonald's car park is awash with it and is surrounded with huge empty refuse bins, we allow young people to become hopelessly drunk in our town centres to the point of lying in a stupor in the gutter we allow our fire and ambulance staff to be attacked on a regular basis for fun I could go on but this is depressing me, no we are not a police state we need cleaning up, the last time I saw a cop was was on television

[edit on 30-4-2007 by avro]

[edit on 30-4-2007 by avro]

Once you install one street camera you gotta install another to watch that camera and another to watch that one and so on... otherwise you'll just have the drug deal going on right under the camera in its blind spot.. seems pretty inefficient ;-)

One thing I did not notice till now in the article is the quote:

There are more than four million CCTV cameras in this country, one for every 14 people, and the national DNA database which was set up by police to combat crime now holds 3.5 million profiles.

The UK also has an extensive DNA database it seems, 3,500,000 profiles.

That seems like alot, lets see:

UK popluation=60,700,000
DNA profiles=3,500,000

This works out to 5.8% of the population has a profile stored by the UK Police.

So that means that according to the article, ONE out of SEVENTEEN (1 out of 17) people have their DNA profiles stored in the National DNA database.

I looked it up on Wikipedia this is all new information to me, amazing information...

The United Kingdom National DNA Database (NDNAD; officially the UK National Criminal Intelligence DNA Database) was set up in 1995. As of the end of 2005 it carries the profiles around 3.4 million people, over 585,000 of them taken from children aged under 16 [1]

This is kinda scary, just more evidence of intrusive behavior.

Originally posted by Rockpuck
PS. Private public survaliance is still used by the government

[edit on 4/30/2007 by Rockpuck]

Afraid not mate, most are just recording onto DVD's or tapes, so to actually use it effectively you would need a court order for the tapes and need actually physically get the tapes. As I said, they can only see where you went, not where you are...

Originally posted by greatlakes
This is kinda scary, just more evidence of intrusive behavior.

So you dont want the police keeping records of criminals....ah I see so its a case of forgive and forget because people dont reoffend once they've been inside...
Do you work for the crown courts of the magistrates by anychance because thats exactly thier attitude to combating crime: Forgive and forget.

When you've actually stepped on british soil, lived here for atleast 2 years and got a citizenship here THEN you can tell me what to do about "big brother".