The Telegraph on the surveillance society

The Telegraph has a couple of stories about liberty today.

This one is about the imminent Parliamentary inquiry into the ’surveillance society’ - are we living in one, are we sleepwalking into one, should we be concerned?

Philip Johnston writes,

We are already a “surveillance society”. We are, for the time being, fortunate that the full potential for its abuse is constrained by the pluralist democracy in which we live. However, we do not have to look back very far in history to imagine the use to which such snooping could be put.

…

In the wrong hands, technology that appears benign can be used to shackle. Within the lifetimes of millions alive today, there were totalitarian regimes that would have made the most appalling use of such opportunities.

I have no doubt that our political masters believe the rapid expansion of CCTV cameras, for instance, is good for us. Indeed, that would be the view of most people, who seem happy with the cameras.

…

It is right that the home affairs select committee should look at this, although it is hard to see what it can do about it. We already have close to five million CCTV cameras, which is one fifth of the world’s total.

The average Londoner might be monitored by 300 CCTV cameras a day. They are not going to be switched off, merely made more sophisticated.

But the committee can do one thing and that is alert the country to the potential dangers of putting all this surveillance together - the CCTV, DNA, ID card, radio-frequency identification, citizens’ database - and linking it up with the rest of the information held on us.

…

One of the things I find most interesting is that the public is on the one hand broadly supportive of such measures, but on the other hand it doesn’t trust the government (or others with access) not to misuse or abuse the information.

It seems to me that there hasn’t been nearly enough discussion about the present situation with mass surveillance and all those government databases, where we are going with it - and where we are likely to end up - and whether or not we are happy with that.