Britain - just keeps getting creepier

Old news to science fiction readers. See, for example, Friday by Robert A. Heinlein (1982.)

Cameras for govmit snooping ? No.

Cameras for crime prevention ? Absolutely !!

Surveillance cameras are great tools, especially effective in child abuse/abduction cases.

Also, would Bernardo/Karlamalk have recieved jail time w/o the tapes ??

Security cameras on the street --- what's to fear ?? Don't scratch your ass in public :)

Truly Orwellian. And frightening.

In Britain, they've already disarmed the populace. (Canada is only a few good men away, too. http://mark-peters.blogspot.com/2007/05/for-criminal-acts-remove-freedoms-of.html) Now they're monitoring every movement of the supposedly free.

And liberals, of course, continue to tell us we have nothing to fear from the state.

'Just one more product, I guess, of their open immigration policy over the last 40 years.

Canada would do well to learn from their example.

From a highly civilized democracy to a police state in less than half a century.

'Scary, alright.

This will be a good way to ensure British women wear their hijabs.

Someone will put a bag over their head and shoot it down into traffic or into a crowd. Or it will just crash on its own, as things that fly invariably need to land, sometimes unexpectedly. The resulting liability issues will presumably put an end to it. The device will then see limited use in the Scottish and Welsh highlands to monitor sheep green house gas emissions. Not very far sighted in their planning.

The technology is not creepy. It is how UAVs are used that has the potential to be creepy.

Incinerating cars full of Islamic fascists in Yemen is a great application. Or, as a hypothetical example, tracking a just paroled child sex predator who has snatched his 15th victim from the local playground.

However using UAVs to issue fines to Britons because they were "spotted" in their back yard throwing a pop can into the garbage instead of the recycling bin is not good.

It's all in the application.

Schwarze, you beat me to it. The headline should read:

"Britons To Be Watched By Autonomous Hovering Police Drones... Until One Of Them Autonomously Crashes On Something Expensive."

Here's another good headline:

"Britons To Be Watched By Autonomous Hovering Police Drones...Until They Figure Out To Aim Porch Lights Upward."

Hard to see into somebody's yard at night if they point a spotlight at your drone.

How long until the local kids find out how much fun playing "blind the drone" with a laser pointer can be? I'm thinking about ten minutes after the first one takes to the air. I predict land office sales volumes for those green lasers that burn paper. I bet you could smoke a CCD camera at half a mile with one of those things.

The Brave New World in Britain, courtesy of "New" Labour. That's the same old Labour Communist/Socialist/Collectivist crowd with new euphemisms for the same recycled agenda, State control of the individual, for "the public good".

I wonder how many Britons now regret voting out the Conservatives under John Major? Fifteen years of "New" Labour have basically destroyed all the social and economic reforms of the Thatcher Era.

However, I don't have a whole helluva lot of sympathy for the British electorate. Post WW2, they've several times voted in Labour, each time getting more of the same "we know what's best for you" arrogant collectivist incompetence.

The moral is be careful what you wish (or vote) for, as you might get it.

It's quite amazing how little Canadians value their freedom, according to some of the comments here!

Government surveillance of our activities will not deter crime, but will enable govt agencies to monitor honest people who transgress their ever more petty laws, while allowing the career criminals more freedom to operate. While the police bust you for incorrect recycling or jaywalking, the dope dealers will operate with impunity

The solution to tracking sex criminals,or any other violent miscreants, is to NOT release them in the first place.

Right now,today, in Calgary,there is the international childrens festival going on downtown at the olympic plaza and surrounding venues. The police are ID'ing any single guys in the area that are not with children and telling them to move on. This is to protect the children,of course.This is scary. I will not be going to the library until it is over. What is next,the parks? Does this mean on a hot summer day a man cannot read a book in a park where children are playing unless he brings a kid with him? I am all for castrating the pedophiles or worse but this is going too far overboard.

Dang, Wallyj. Rather than criminalize random strangers, how about people watch their cottonpickin children.

I understand fixed cameras in high-crime areas as long as they are strictly public areas and people are aware they are being watched. And as long as something is actually being done about the actual crimes, apart from just watching them happen. But I keep thinking of Winston Smith having to travel to meet his girlfriend by one route and travel home by another, so that no one notices that he went *somewhere* for a couple of hours and grills him about where that might have been.

This is just the latest step in the socialization of Britain. After WWII, the US Marshall Plan funneled billions into Europe. Countries like Germany and France used it to rebuild their industry. The UK used it to nationalize industry and build a welfare state.

Apart from a brief respite during the Thatcher years, the framework for the British economy and culture are steadily being eaten away.

I suppose it is all part of the natural ebb and flow of great civilizations, but it's quite remarkable in an age of such self-awareness that the British people are so willing to let it happen.

George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house

"and within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move."

The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell's 1984 has become a reality - in the shadow of the author's former London home.

It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell's vision of a society where cameras and computers [and Autonomous Hovering Police Drones] spy on every person's movements is now here. ...-
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23391081-details/George+Orwell,+Big+Brother+is+watching+your+house/article.do

Laura,I agree with the cameras for high crime areas. In fact, I live in an area where crackheads are way too common. One fine day I was harassed by the buggers so I phoned our finest. 18 minutes later I phoned them back to say the problem has moved on and thank you for your timely response.Possibly they were too busy bothering single childless males.

All of this surveillance and yet this happens?

"The primary duty of any government is to protect its citizens. In any normal society, people who are thought to be dangerous are jailed. Those suspected of terrorist leanings are either locked up or, if they are foreign nationals, thrown out of the country.
But not in Britain. Some of the foreign terrorist suspects are not locked up at all. Instead, the Government allows them to remain in their homes under "control orders". And then it loses them.

Two days ago, three terrorist suspects absconded while under such control orders and are now on the run. We now learn that "solid intelligence" indicated that the three absconders intended to blow up British and other Allied troops abroad.

This brings to a total of six the number of terror suspects whom the British security authorities have managed to lose while the subject of control orders.

The system is a farcical shambles. Even worse, the Home Office tried to keep these earlier disappearances secret. We know about this latest triple flight only because the police insisted that the public should be informed of these men’s identities.

It appears that these three men were able to abscond because they were required to do no more than surrender their passports and report to a telephone monitoring company or to the police.

As for why the men weren’t subject to more stringent restrictions, the answer was that they didn’t pose a direct threat to Britain."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=457512&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=256

Things may change in Britian. The Labor Party could be in trouble without Tony Blair. The Scots are voting for the Scottish Independence Party instead of Labur, and I understand Labur depended on strong Scottish support. Winds of change?

It has already spread to Canada; we have "hovering drones":-Layton & Dion.

You will notice that countries like Britain and the USA pioneer the use of these Orwellian spy-in-the-sky devices during their foreign wars to jam the welfare state down the throats of various third-world goatherders and their local tyrants and overlords - ERRR! - I mean to give freedom and democracy to downtrodden people. Shortly afterwards they propose to use the same Orwellian devices on their own populace. So they can protect and enhance the welfare state. While providing billions of dollars to defense contractors and putting tens of thousands more people on the government payroll. And greatly enhancing the power of the people in government and greatly increasing the fear of government among the local populace.

I'm a little bit more hopeful for you people now. If you can see what a disgraceful mess Britain is becoming, and you look carefully at the USA and Canada, you can see that precisely the same government power- and money-grab is at work. You did know that it has been proposed already to use these drones in the 'States, right? And that they've already starting testing them over US soil? Must've been in a signing statement.

P.S. Check out the new proposed Guest Worker law in the USA. The juicy part is somewhere around page 300 or so ... the federal government is going to start paying US lawyers to represent illegal immigrant clients. All expansions of the state are essentially welfare programs. You just have to dig a little to find out who's getting the biggest pull on the taxpayer's teat.

Unbelievable. Everybody in England should be sat down and forced to play Half Life 2 to see how they are going to end up if they don't stop the path they are on.

Speaking as someone who was born in the U.K.,lived in Canada for over 40 years,and a Canadian citizen. I see nothing wrong with this, the only people who should be concerned are the people who are looking to break the law. I would have no concerns about being seen on CCTV as I am a law abiding citizen. The U.K. is seething with British born Islamists who are bent on causing harm to the general population, anything that will curtail this type of terrorism is O.K. with me. We Canadians have no real idea of the problems facing the general population in the U.K. I talk with my brother on Skype most every day, and he has no problems with this. Just look at our own alleged terrorism plot in Ontario...

maz2: "George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house..."

Yup. That's because no one's home. Good G*d. It's really very simple.

Hillary Clinton's "It takes a village to bring up a child" is a pile of hooey. What kind of village would you be talking about, Hill?

It would have to be a village where the moms are in the house, in the kitchen, in the doorways, looking out not only for their own kids but for all the kids in the neighbourhood. Those are the neighbourhoods we used to have, before everyone had to be "fulfilling themselves," which basically meant, the kids will have to either fare for themselves or have a babysitter, nanny, or daycare worker to take care of them. If a stranger this way comes, who's going to notice?

The result of motherless homes?

Cameras to detect strangers who walk into the 'hood. 'Used to be when moms would notice, because moms knew their kids and the neighbours' kids. They don't anymore.

So, we need Big Brother, Big Camera.

Where's Mister Rogers and the moms when you need them?

Its looking a bit like LOGANS RUN when will we be seeing the sandmen? and what about last day? and look out for the cubs and beware of box and hey im a runner im over 30

The fullest Science Fiction explorations of the various effects and unintended consequences of living in a fully monitored society; official surveillence, wireless communications, ubiquitous private cameras etc. may be by David Brin (Earth, Kiln People, some short stories) a most excellent author and thinker.
Sincerely,
But, I am no expert
Robert Albin
Calgary

When I was in Britain 3 years ago, I saw the CCTV everywhere; it is very Orwellian indeed.

Wallyj.....single guys are easier to harrass. They usually just say WTF and move on. Cops know if they did bust the crackheads,the courts would let them back on the street before the cops finished their paperwork,so why bother? Another loverly result of socialism....the crooks get treated better than the victims. Solution? Don't let yourself become a victim.

Argee how do you resolve this?

The chain of events starts where someone is suspected of terrorism but there isn’t enough evidence that can be brought to open court without compromising intelligence sources. If he is a foreign national, the obvious thing to do is to deport him as an undesirable.

But the courts have interpreted human rights law so perversely that they say no one can be deported to a country which doesn’t uphold human rights. Since, according to their criteria, that rules out just about everywhere, that makes deportation all but impossible.

As a result, the Government decided to lock up foreign terror suspects instead. But then human rights law wouldn’t permit that either.

Socialists are busily completing their surveillance infrastructure. How many more days until a salivating Denis Coderre gets in position to bring in a "voluntary" Canadian citzenship card? Individual freedom is being replaced by encroaching government controls right now. Those controls are being sold to society as an solution to our fears and insecurities and are meant to be permanent.

We are becoming, step by step, instinguishable drones in a vanilla society. Elections won't matter because in every case you'll be voting for essentially the same person - just a different skin.

If knowledge is power and possession is 9/10th of the law, how much power does a government have over citizens through gathering constant surveillance? Does that knowledge ultimately result in government possessing the individual? Would a government once in possession of individual citizens ever willingly reliquish its' hold?

"Lost" isn't a lame pointless Oahu television drama. It really best refers to what individuals are becoming in our western democracies.

Chairman Mao would be proud. Papers please?

"Britons To Be Watched By Autonomous Hovering Police Drones."

My Gawd these people must be dangerous to warrant this type of police micro management/surveillance....I hope we don't allow many into this Country or they will need similar micro-managing ;-)

"Security cameras on the street --- what's to fear ?? Don't scratch your ass in public"

Yeah they make great handgun targets...keeps the old shooting eye tuned up between gang bangs ;-)

Police presence where police are generally afraid to walk a beat?