An interesting new book has landed on my desk. The Road to Southend Pier details Ross Clark's struggle against the surveillance society.
Britain’s Information Commissioner said that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society so Ross Clark decided to find out if that was true.
These are some of the facts uncovered by Mr Clark:
- There are 4·2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, one for every 14 people
- In 2004 Melbourne dismantled its 23 cameras because they did not justify the A$500,000 they cost annually
- Britons are the third most spied on people on earth; only China and Malaysia spy more on their citizenry
- In 1998 Newham introduced a facial recognition software. Unfortunately, it didn’t work on sunny days and had a tendency to confuse young people and women and had a tendency to recognise black people
- Despite the claim that DNA is foolproof – it isn’t. If everyone in Britain (60 million people) was on the database the chances of a mistake being made by misidentifying someone’s DNA at a crime scene is actually one in 16
- In 2007 John Reid admitted that the Prevention of Terrorism Act had been drafted in such a way that people on control orders i.e. terrorists could not have their fingerprints and DNA taken
- In 2007 the Home Office admitted that despite the plethora of CCTV, DNA databases, tagging and police surveillance it had “lost” 322 registered sex offenders
- In 2005 2,000 people randomly volunteered to be surveyed for the biometric ID card. It took an average of seven minutes and 56 seconds to record the information. To cover the entire country would take 905 man years
- Between April and June 2007 the six largest European airlines lost 1·12 million pieces of luggage – this at a time when passengers and their baggage are supposed to be monitored every step of their journey
