Cameras That Talk Back

This one from the Daily Mail yesterday, CCTV cameras are now being equipped with loudspeakers.  That made that vein on the side of my head pulse:

Big Brother is not only watching you – now he’s barking orders too. Britain’s first ‘talking’ CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.

The system allows control room operators who spot any anti-social acts – from dropping litter to late-night brawls – to send out a verbal warning: ‘We are watching you’.

Middlesbrough has fitted loudspeakers on seven of its 158 cameras in an experiment already being hailed as a success. Jack Bonner, who manages the system, said: ‘It is one hell of a deterrent. It’s one thing to know that there are CCTV cameras about, but it’s quite another when they loudly point out what you have just done wrong.

‘Most people are so ashamed and embarrassed at being caught they quickly slink off without further trouble."

It is estimated that there are more than 4 million surveillance cameras in Britain. These range from simple store cameras that record the cashier’s area once a second to the full zoom-pan-tilt cameras that the Police use to fight crime.  It is said that the Police CCTV cameras can look into houses in various neighbourhoods in the UK. The only restraint on the UK police is the “We don’t do that” statements of the local authorities.

Four million cameras and 60 million citizens. Orwell was only a couple of decades off.

As an experiment in tit-for-tat, the next time you see the police pulling someone over on the side of the road, why not pull out your video camera and tape the entire exchange?  Even if it is just a simple warning, put it all on tape. 

Do you want to guess how many more charges you’ll be threatened with?  Do you want to guess how fast the cuffs will come out?  Do you want to guess exactly how many times you’ll be picked up by your eyebrows and dumped in the back of a cruiser?

I object to being watched all the time.  But I object more when nobody is watching the watchers.