CCTV even lets Big Brother down
Despite spending billions of pounds on security cameras to make London the most heavily-monitored city in the world (1 camera for every 14 people), officials from Scotland Yard reported today that their massive new CCTV network has failed to make a noticeable change in crime rates.
Hard to believe, right? Seemed like such a good idea at the time! George Orwell would be shocked.
The news left both London officials and citizens in shock, less than a year after heated debates raged across the LDN over right-to-privacy implications of the city’s CCTV initiative. With only 3% of street crimes actually solved using the police’s closed circuit network, the public’s been left to wonder what purpose the cameras really do serve.
Conspiracy theories are flying, but the city maintains that the trouble is officer training and information processing — instead of dismantling the system, the government’s proposed a nationwide database of CCTV images which could be searched and accessed by police from any location in the country.
Because, when your own administrators are calling a program “a fiasco” and public rights activists have expressed concern for over a decade, the best option is to make that program even bigger.
After all, the Home Office has only spent 78% of its budget since 1997 on CCTV so far; that means there’s like 22% left to go!
Civic planning at its best.
Hard-Fi: “Stars of CCTV”
Frisco: “Smile for the Camera”
Assassin: “Pum Pum Surveillance”
The Bird & the Bee: “I Hate Camera”
Six Finger Satellite: “Surveillance House”
