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There’s a curious article on the BBC’s news website today about CCTV in Glasgow, Scotland that has the ability to listen;

Security cameras have long been a fact of Scottish life, viewed with relief by many communities and with suspicion by civil libertarians. But what if they were listening to you as well?

Scary. However, the article goes on to say;

A Dutch company called Sound Intelligence carried out a two week long trial in a busy city centre street. They stress that their system, called Sigard, does not record conversations. It listens not to what is being said but how it is being said.

Ok, so that’s slightly less scary, if you believe it, but where this entire idea really (and thankfully) falls apart is here;

[A spokesman for the company...] Bram Kuipers demonstrated this by clapping his hands. A display screen noted the sounds but took no action. Then he shouted aggressively. This time an alarm sounded and a CCTV camera spun round to look directly at the source of the shouting.

It will not work in reducing serious street violence, and here is why. I was born and spent the first thirty years of my life in London, ergo, I can speak with far more authority on the subject of street violence than anyone making lamposts with ears in a Dutch field full of tulips, and here are a couple of things that we learn really young in London;

1. People who shout a lot in the street are almost always of little real threat. They are using up their aggressive energy in the act of making an unholy noise, and therefore are likely to be easy to deal with if they get out of hand physically. Usually they are either very young, or very drunk, or both.
2. The most effective, and by far the most dangerous, violence on the streets comes from people who have thought quietly about what they are intending to do before they suddenly, and usually almost silently, do it.

So you see, the probably extremely expensive camera with ears will have a look at a shouty-but-harmless sixteen year old who has drunk way too many pints, and probably catch the last few seconds of him falling over, all by himself, dead drunk onto the ground. It will not look, though, as a truly dodgy geezer quietly walks up to his target and knifes him.

Pretty pointless then, no?

Then of course we have the real life situations;

Lets suppose this tech spreads out all over the UK. Then one day Jock comes down to London for the weekend. Goes out on the booze and ends up at a bus stop next to a bunch of drunken teenagers who hear his accent and decide to take the mickey (it’s always a bad plan, by the way, to take the mickey out of drunken Scots, it does terrible things to your life-expectancy). So Jock, used to the mean streets of Glasgow says; “Ah, will ya be quiet ya wee kiddies”, and looks innocent until the camera turns away.

Ok, so remember this bit?

Then he shouted aggressively. This time an alarm sounded and a CCTV camera spun round to look directly at the source of the shouting.

So the camera will see the mouthy kids giving Jock some verbal grief. All well and good. But then comes this;

Bram Kuipers demonstrated this by clapping his hands. A display screen noted the sounds but took no action.

You see Jock is not stupid and he like any Londoner will know CCTV well, and as we can see above the camera, once it has looked away, will not look around again as Jock decides to exact his revenge on the mouthy kids by quietly slapping them around a bit.

And Jock will know this.

I rest my case. This tech will not work.

Why are so many Britons emigrating? Is it the prospect of a better life elsewhere, or are British citizens repelled by life in their native land?

So asks the UK’s Daily Telegraph today. It then shortly afterwards goes on to publish another piece referring to yet another ‘Big Brother’ style database that the British Government are soon to implement.

The Home Office will create a database to store the details of every phone call made, every email sent and every web page visited by British citizens in the previous year under plans currently under discussion, it has emerged.

Thus neatly, if probably unwittingly, answering it’s own question.

Having been forced to shelve plans to fingerprint all passengers travelling through Heathrow’s Terminal 5, I notice today that the British Government have clearly been having a chat with their friends across the pond.

The result?

More than four million British tourists face being fingerprinted when they leave the United States, under plans drawn up by the American government.

It does not take a giant leap of the imagination to guess where those prints will be mailed to.

However, there is little that we as Brits can do to alter a US Government decision; a fact that the British Government is only too well aware of.

Yet we can apply pressure, and in the case of the British Government we can and have achieved big results. NO2ID were instrumental in stopping the fingerprinting at Heathrow by applying pressure in the right places and asking awkward questions of the right people at the right time.

If you do it right, you can force the British Government to back down.

Want to help us make bringing in intrusive legislation as difficult as possible for the British Authorities? Get involved. Are you a Brit living overseas – this affects you too, much more than you might expect – and want to help? Join NO2ID Expats.

The more of us there are, the more we can do.

Meanwhile, continuing reading through the feeds (see last post) here are the other two stories that caught my eye this morning. These two both relating to the unfortunate plight that is being a child in Britain these days.

The first one, in today’s UK Guardian, has this horrific news;

New evidence has shown children’s lives are being put at risk by a surge in the use of controversial tranquillising drugs which are being prescribed to control their behaviour, the Guardian has learned. The anti-psychotic drugs are being given to youngsters under the age of six even though the drugs have no licence for use in children except in certain schizophrenia cases, the report says.

Even leaving aside the enormous health risks for the children being fed these drugs, a simple question has to be asked: Why are tranquilisers – anti-psychotic or not – being given to children in the first place? And some of these poor kids are under the age of six?

That is sick.

However there is a bright side to this story; the kids will be too drugged up to be able to worry about this news regarding UK children being added to the UK’s DNA database;

Data obtained shows that the proportion of children being added is rising, with 5,000 being included every month. Between October and January, 25 per cent of those added were 18 or younger, compared with less than 11 per cent of those already listed on it. In total, 152,066 people were put on the (DNA) database between October and January – 37,818 of whom were 18 or under. Forecasts suggest that by next year one in 10 children will be included. The Daily Telegraph revealed last month that 44 children under 10 were on the database.

Happily, the British don’t need to worry about civil liberties or the surveillance state or any such things as a Home Office spokesman said ‘people who were innocent had nothing to fear’.

I’m surprised that he didn’t just speak the truth and say “Nevermind, the kids are so off their heads on tranquilisers that they don’t mind anything these days.”

Anyway, as the British Government seem to revel in making up new laws, how about they add this one: Any adult caught raising children in Britain will be prosecuted for child abuse.

Why not? That’s what it is.

From the You Just Couldn’t Make This Stuff Up Dept;

Lidl, the German supermarket chain, have been caught using matchbox sized cameras to spy on their employees. The detectives watching the staff have come up with such shocking information as the following;

“Saturday 10.10am Ms J tells Ms L that she has never paid her television licence fees because she is still registered with her parents, even though she lives with her boyfriend. The detective’s end-of-week advice to management is that Ms J is a security risk.”

And…

“Ms R has been leaving the till to go to the toilet every 15 minutes, despite waiting customers.”

Needless to say Lidl are now, quite rightly, in trouble.