When it comes to Big Brother surveillance, Britain is the champion of the world with the average citizen risking to be caught on CCTV cameras up to 300 times a day.
Britain, where 4.2 million of the cameras have been installed, relies on the monitoring gadgets far more than any other country in the world.
Despite accounting for just one percent of the global population, Britain operates 20 percent of all such technology used across the world.
PHOTO: AFP
But despite warnings from experts of a rapid slide into a Big Brother society — the term coming from the novel 1984 by George Orwell about totalitarianism, and not the current reality TV series — the Labour government has embarked on an extension of the program.
It is introducing so-called talking cameras that tell people off for dropping litter or committing anti-social behavior.
Under a new pilot scheme, talking CCTV cameras are to be installed in 20 areas across England.
They have already been used in the town of Middlesbrough, a crime hotspot in the north-east of the country, where anyone seen misbehaving can be told off via a loudspeaker.
Home Secretary John Reid has earmarked nearly £500,000 to fund the expansion.
Defending his scheme against critics, Reid said the cameras were aimed at "the small minority" who "litter our streets, vandalize our communities and damage our properties."
He also announced that competitions would be held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the voice of the cameras.
"By funding and supporting these local schemes, the government is encouraging children to send this clear message to grown ups — act anti-socially and you will face the shame of being publicly embarrassed," Reid said.
The talking cameras were "hugely popular" in Middlesbrough and the vast majority of the people there were backing the scheme, he insisted.
"It helps counter things like litter through drunk or disorderly behavior, gangs congregating. They are the sorts of things that make people's lives a misery. Anything that tackles that is better."
The fight against so-called anti-social behavior has been a main plank of Blair's law-and-order program, but statistics have shown that the measures taken by the government have failed to have the desired effect.
The new talking cameras will be installed in 20 towns and cities all over the country, including three districts in London.
In Middlesbrough, staff in a control center monitor pictures from 12 talking cameras and can communicate directly with people on the street.
Local councilor Barry Coppinger says the scheme has prevented fights and criminal damage and cut litter levels.
"Generally, I think it has raised awareness that the town center is a safe place to visit and also that we are keeping an eye open to make sure it is safe," he said.
But opponent and campaigner Steve Hills said: "Apart from being absurd, I think it's rather sad that we should have faceless cameras barking at us on orders from who?"
A recent study by the government's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner, warned that Britain was becoming a "surveillance society."
Commissioner Richard Thomas said excessive use of CCTV and other information gathering was creating a climate of suspicion.
Shami Chakrabati, director of human rights group Liberty, said the report was a clear warning to private and public sectors to curb their appetite for gathering personal information.
"The desire for a little bit of privacy is part of being human and the nation's dignity should not be for sale," she said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby