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Somebody’s watching me…
You might have seen the news stories today (here and here) about the new restrictions that are to be introduced, to limit the use of surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
In case you’re not aware, RIPA allows councils, police and so on to use surveillance techniques to detect and prevent crime. It was introduced in an attempt to thwart terrorist activity and, according to what has been said in today’s media, should only be used for the investigation of serious crime.
However, because the Act is quite lax local councils have been using the powers it grants them to investigate serious crimes like littering, doug fouling and suspected school placement manipulation. Quite rightly, Jaqui Smith – our esteemed Home Secretary – has said this isn’t right and announced measures to stop misuse of the Act.
If, like me, you’d never heard of RIPA until now you might be feeling a little uneasy about it. Basically, it gives your local authority the right to spy on you for any reason that it sees fit. There is no requirement for councils to seek authorisation from a court or a judge and they appear not to have to justify their actions.
But I think the fact that the Act was introduced – and, it would seem, covertly introduced at that – at all is what is most disturbing. It may be 2009 rather than 1984, but we are living firmly in Orwell’s distopian Big Brother world. Everywhere we go, we’re monitored by CCTV. We leave an electronic trail a mile wide whenever we do anything. We have no privacy any more.
I’ve found it funny recently to read stories about people being up in arms about Google Street View taking pictures of their street. They’re worried about the invasion of their privacy – even though their privacy is invaded every day by the hundreds of CCTV cameras that line our streets. But, those cameras are there to protect them from crime so it’s OK. And they have the same argument with the ID card scheme; if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you object to it?
I object to CCTV, and ID cards, and RIPA for a number of reasons. The first is that why should I be constantly monitored when I am going about my private, law-abiding business? My second objection is that this constant surveillance does not stop crime; it displaces it to areas that don’t have CCTV or it sits back and watches the crime be committed. Rather than spending however many millions of pounds it is that have been spent on cameras, why not employ some more police (proper police, not PCSOs), to actually walk the streets, get to know their community, keep order? You know, like they used to years ago.
But my biggest objection by far is that all of this surveillance, ID schemes, and so on, produces a huge amount of data on honest, law-abiding citizens which is then stored in local council, police and Government databases. Yet, as they have consistently shown over the last few years, none of these august bodies knows diddly squat about data security. So I sit here, protecting myself as much as possible from identity theft and fraud, and the Government goes and gives my data away willy nilly.
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