Every Step You Take, I'll Be Watching You

Ironic that that song lyric was immortalized by a British band called — Well. You know. Make of that what you will.

Britain's all-pervasive CCTV system — a network of five million surveillance cameras — got off the ground in the 1980s as a response to IRA terrorism. And now? Now it's used by municipalities to combat underage smoking and drinking, and to crack down on illegal DVD copies.

A Midland council is using laws designed to combat terrorism to spy on kids they suspect of underage smoking and drinking. Staffordshire County Council has carried out nearly 70 surveillance operations across the county in the last three years. Trading Standards officers secretly filmed underage kids smoking and drinking during some of the investigations — and used informants to identify rogue shopkeepers who sold them the fags and booze. The council snoops used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to tackle the petty offences, yet the legislation was originally designed to prevent terrorism and serious crimes. Other Staffordshire surveillance cases involved monitoring the movement of farm animals and targeting people cashing in on bootleg DVD sales.

The justification for going after the disc bootleggers is particularly farfetched noteworthy. Community Safety Manager Brandon Cooke explains that

"...it is well documented that the proceeds of these kind of goods often goes towards serious organised crime, including terrorism."

Here's a previous story featured on Nobody's Business, involving the authorities' use of hidden cameras to catch people who put out their trash on the wrong day.

[thanks, Nicky!]

Comments

[benpal]

While waiting for my flight to depart from Leeds airport, standing at the bus stop in front of the airport building, I took some pictures of the airport. I was obviously spied upon through CCTV cameras, because it took less than 5 minutes before a security agent came running towards me and asked me to erase the photographs. His justification was that the airport is private property and that one has to apply for a permit to take pictures.

They can spy on you but you are not allowed to take pictures ...

[Hermes Ten]

It's inevitable. In Florida, there is actually a guy running for Sheriff on the slogan: "Crime is terrorism."

Except for the Bushlilckers, there isn't really anybody who believes that the emerging police state has anything really to do with "terrorism," is there?

We're also charging some high school kid here with building a WMD because he order 10 lbs of ammonium nitrate. Wow, we invaded Iraq for that (snicker....snicker). And if that's a WMD, then all those 10,000 lb bombs we're raining down on Iraq and Afghanistan are super WMDs. At worst, the kid is just trying to be as responsible as our government.

[Karl]

Up here in Nottingham, they've added loudspeakers to some of the CCTV cameras, so that our Fearless Guardians can shout at people who drop litter!