Smile Please

We now find out the government is planning the use of speed cameras for surveillance outside of simple speeding. So we can't be world number one at many things but at least we can be the most watched society in the world. Makes you feel sort of proud.

I think there are two issues here. The first is plainly the civil rights one. This is partly about revenue collection, of course, but the evolving mindset is that citizens are assets to be tracked, monitored and managed like anthing else. Everything can be justified because the more control the government has, the easier it will be to prevent terrorism. Ha. We are being asked to give up increasing amounts of personal freedom in the cause of defending our right to... ..give up increasing amounts of personal freedom, presumably. As Phill Zimmermann, the originator of PGP once said, the logical consequence of the argument that if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear, is that we should dispense with envelopes and write all our communications on postcards.

It was so simple in the days of the Cold War. The function of the government was to protect us from the Evil East and their vast, grey armies. Communism, CND, NCCL, Trade Unions - they were all manifestations of the Enemy. This was the only obstacle preventing our governments from delivering the prosperity, joy and freedom inherent in the idea of capitalism.

The second issue is one of language. In a development that would presumably amuse George Orwell, our ability to object to these infringements of personal privacy in a pithy, implication-laden phrase has been eroded. Big Brother no longer implies a brutal, intrusive dictatorship stifling free speech and dissent, but rather a voyeuristic, tacky, ratings-led structured humiliation of the gullible or Z-list celebrities.

Still unpleasant but somehow we have lost something.