Great Britain - The Surveillance State

Great Britain – The Surveillance State

 

When one attempts to summarise the polity of Great Britain, words such as “liberty”, “rights” and “tolerance” spring to mind. Britain is one of the oldest Liberal Democracies in the world and a strong attachment to freedom and rights is embedded in the British psyche. However, the extent to which Britain continues to embody and promote these principles is debatable. The increased threat of global terrorism, growing role of the state and the dependence on surveillance in order to curb crime have all weakened the freedom of British citizens.

 

Britain is the world leader in the realm of Close Circuit Television Cameras, not a fact to be proud of. With over four million CCTV cameras we are arguably the most watched nation on Earth. A report by the House of Lords in 2009 claimed that; “the huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy". Attempts to justify the prevalence of CCTV cameras with the argument that they help prevent crime also fall into disrepute. Despite our reliance on surveillance, more people in Britain admit to being victims of crime than almost any where else in the world. Often CCTV footage fails to persecute crime as most of the images that are recorded are of insufficient quality or breach the Human Rights or Data Protection Act thus meaning they would be inadmissible in a court. The growth in Close Circuit Cameras has been one of the most fundamental threats to individual privacy and freedom in recent years and their growing presence on our streets seriously undermine claims that Britain is a nation of freedom.

 

Another way in which individual freedom has been threatened is through the planned Identity card scheme under the previous Labour government. Although this scheme has now been scrapped, the mere suggestion that huge reams of personal information; finger print scans, facial and iris scans and current and past places of residence and addresses of every British citizen rings of a Gestapo state. Claims that a National Identity card scheme would lessen the threat of terrorism and curb crime is also questionable. The system of identity cards is unlikely to rescue us from fraud or terrorism, the London bombers did not attempt to conceal their identities and 95% of all benefit fraudsters don’t lie about their identities, only their circumstances. Even more worrying than the prospect of extremely personal information being kept on a government database is the likelihood that this information won’t even be secure. Multiple cases of government files going missing (2,100 security breaches at HM Revenues and Customs in 2007) hardly reassure citizens that their information will be protected in government hands’. The risk to personal security through the incompetence of government departments combined with the infringement upon personal privacy and the fact that a National Identity Card scheme would have little impact upon curbing terrorism and crime anyway, renders the idea of a National Identity Card scheme ridiculous at best and dangerous at worst. 

 

In summation, in his 1948 dystopian novel; ‘1984, George Orwell created a society in which the privacy of individuals’ was utterly disregarded and state surveillance reigned supreme. The immense expansion of state surveillance has meant that the notion of individual privacy and freedom is becoming ever more distant and that we are moving closer towards a state controlled police state in which there is no regard for our personal liberties. The aim of Counter Terrorist security procedures is to protect citizens but also ensure typical ‘Western’ values such as liberty, free speech and the right to privacy, the overreact to terrorism and the massive expansion in state surveillance that has occurred as a result of this could have been seen to directly undermine ‘Western’ principles, thus aiding extremist terrorists in their mission to halt the ideals of liberty.

 

I will leave you with an Orwell quote which I feel encompasses, to some extent, the society we now live in; “In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”

 

 

Sources:

 

Butler, E, The Rotten State of Britain & How to cure it, (Gibson Square, London)

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/06/surveillance-freedom-peers