I had to lift my camera high above the fence that cordons off Parliament Square to get this shot. Notice the ubiquitous surveillance camera on top of the buildings tower?Britain is the most surveilled nation in the world with the average Londoner being photographed 400+ times a day. In this age of high resolution colour images, face recognition software and integrated tracking systems its a scary thought.
This remarkable invasion of privacy has become the norm in our post 9-11 society where you can never really escape from the cameras except way out in the countryside. "So if you have nothing to hide whats the problem" you may say. Or 'It makes us safer and protects us from terrorism". Really? - that all kind of depends on the watchers being fair and never making mistakes doesn't it? and just whose definition of terrorism are we quoting here? My big concern is Who watches the watchers? ... this whole big brother thing is just far to open to abuse and misuse.
Having been in local and central government for the last few years, albeit in New Zealand not the UK, my biggest concern are the careless bureaucrats and the state machine which just churns on regardless and can easily destroy peoples lives through mistakes and false profiling for example.
The potential for abuse in this 'Panopticon' Grid we live in is not the only fear, IMHO the potential for cock-up and incompetance far outweighs the potentail for conspiracy or deliberate acts of abuse.
So you don't have to be paranoid to live here, but it helps! because they really are watching you... everywhere and all the time.
Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon is now a reality and we already live in a Police State that is in a permanent state of war, where we are the controlled proles kept quiet by the opium of consumerism and celebrity culture. Does that sound familiar?
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