British police to develop national video ID system

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Sleepwalking towards Big Brother

The British people are allowing themselves to be nudged ever closer to a society that is under perpetual surveillance by the authorities. In the south of England especially, even small towns have a comprehensive network of video cameras to monitor the downtown/town centre areas. Speed cameras are ubiquitous even on rural roads; towns also have traffic signal cameras, and drivers entering London's city centre are forced to pass through barriers at which they are photographed both coming and going. Phone and internet records are routinely supplied to various public authorities by telecoms providers, and cellphone movements are tracked. The so-called 'road pricing' that the current government has announced it intends to introduce, which is a tax to be levied on all drivers for every mile they drive, will be based on readings from a compulsory transmitting/tracking device to be fitted to all vehicles (this on top of fuel that, thanks to heavy taxation, already costs over $8 an imperial gallon [about 10% bigger than a US gallon]).

Unfortunately for the British, they have no US-style constitutional safeguards or guarantees to protect their freedoms, which have been whittled away little by little under successive governments wearing all political stripes. As a Briton now living in the USA, it dismays me to see such an extensive infrastructure of official intrusiveness being created in my native land with little public discussion or parliamentary scrutiny; many of these initiatives have been sneaked into being under the public radar. Britain seems to be heading down the road of compulsory Swiss or Singaporean-style conformity by an incremental process of attrition. The Government and other public authorities, when they are forced to defend the majority of such interventions, habitually chant the mantra of 'national security', even though their eagerness to implement all manner of far-reaching surveillance technologies and procedures appears to be far in excess of what national security considerations require.

In 20 years from now, I am fearful that everyone in Britain, especially people living in urban areas, will be so extensively supervised, scrutinised and subject to sanctioning in every area of their lives that the notion of personal freedom or individual liberty will be merely a distant memory. Privacy will not exist in any meaningful way -- its erosion is already well advanced. If current trends continue at their present rate, the day will not be far off when every newborn is compelled to be implanted with a Government-mandated RFID chip, technology permitting.

Where will it all stop, and what is it going to take for the British people to realise what a heavy price they are already having to pay for their so-called freedoms?

Posted by: Reality Checker   Posted on: 05/24/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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