I saw this at a petrol station recently. OK, I can see that it is in the interest of the petrol station owner to log the registration plates of cars in case they drive off without paying. But I can recall no informed debate about whether this data should be automatically made available to the police!
Democracy my arse! Gradually, using fear of crime and terrorism, the state increases the control that it has over the individual. “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” whine the naive and trusting. This is bollocks. History shows that if authorities are given powers they will abuse them.
It’s also a bit rich to advertise it as “neighbourhood policing”. You’d have to have truly Orwellian mind to consider a nationwide network of CCTV cameras to be neighbourly.
In the UK the police continue to stop ordinary citizens taking photographs in public places yet they feel free to take pictures of us any time they like. Police in Brighton have taken to parking a special CCTV van on the pavement. It’s interesting that there has been criticism of Google for their Streetview project yet we are complacent about police collecting similar information.
If I were a IT systems manager in the police force I would consider creating a system collecting all photographs taken by the police into a single database. I’d then reference police computers and online information such as Facebook, Google and Flickr and use automatic face recognition to allow police CCTV equipment to automatically identify people. Add a head up display to police car windscreens and you have little floating tags over members of the public as they go about their business.
Are the police working on such a system? – How would we know?
This is a video by some guys called The Love Police who are highlighting the increasing restrictions on individuals in public/private spaces. e.g. the way the police claim powers which they do not possess to stop filming.
Oh dear. I am finding myself agreeing with the way that the UK is going.
I heard today that the plans to build a third runway at Heathrow airport have been scrapped. Good, all cheap air travel does is allow more people to travel to the other side of the world to see that the environment there has been ruined by things such as airports.
I heard that Nick Clegg is saying there will be tighter regulation on CCTV. Good, the UK is the most spied on society in the world. A free society is not one when the government watches everything you do.
I heard that they are designing a new Routemaster bus with an open back so that you can hop on and off. Good, this is a British classic and far more convenient than the curent buses.
A cynic would say that the Con / Libs are just announcing the good news first to make a good first impression. However, at the least they have some good news which is more than can be said for the ghastly burbling drivel spouted by Ed Balls this week when interviewed by Eddie Mayer on Radio 4′s PM. Mr. Balls waffle was staggering. This is a man who is standing for leadership of one of the UK’s great political parties. A potential future Prime Minister. Yet he could not think of a single thing to say.
Oops, there I go again attacking New Labour. I have this fear that the people of the UK will awake together and find we were dreaming. Pinch me someone. Is the New Labour nightmare really over?
This is a link to a track named Evidence by La La and the Boo Ya. It is about the fact that the police have CCTV watching everything we do yet the police are now exceeding their authority by trying to prevent ordinary people taking photos in public spaces and specifically taking pictures of police.
As they say: “My life is captured on CCTV, I can’t hide from society”
So why do the police think that they should be allowed to hide from society.
I was up in London again last night for another Christmas drink. On the way back I saw a group of police in the tube and took a photo of them. It seems that they have not taken on board the recent guidance by the chief constable of the British transport police to the Association of Chief Police Officers. His guidance states that anti terror legislation (known as Section 44) “gives officers no specific powers in relation to photography ….”.
This didn’t stop one officer yelling “YOU’RE FILMING!” at me and raising his hand in a attempt to stop me. This seems incredibly hypocritical given the thousands of CCTV cameras throughout the London Underground. The establishment seems bent on introducing more and more big brother methods for policing and it seems that the only people who, they think, should be exempt are themselves. The picture I took is not very good but I reproduce it here as a minor assertion of a freedom which the police seem intent on erasing.
A demonstration is taking place in London to protest police heavy handedness with photographers. Be there.
Just to emphasise the point the picture below shows what happens when a peaceful demonstration takes place. The police turn up and film everyone. Fucking hypocrites!
I have been mulling over the expenses scandal currently bubbling away in the British press and it seems to me that this is the straw that broke the camels back. The expenses scandle is the last in a long stream of betrayals by our leaders and specifically by New Labour. It is time for a general election. (See petition information below).
New Labour came to power promising an end to the sleaze that defined the fag end of the last Tory government. Tony Blair portrayed himself as embracing an innovative vision of The United Kingdom and promulgated a bold modern vision of the future of the UK.
MPs who tried to stop you seeing their expenses
However, it quickly became apparent that the cardinal attribute of New Labour was not vision but spin. One after another New Labour ministers proved themselves corrupt and were dismissed from office only to be brought back in once the fuss had died down.
New Labour policies turned out to be the wholesale adoption of Thatcherism but, as with all converts, the policies were embraced as a doctrine and without understanding or judgement. Privatisations continued and New Labour became the bitch of big business.
Tony Blair began hobnobbing with the super rich and power went to his head. At the frenzied height of New Labour devotion to hyper-capitalism he tried to introduce super casinos. That a Labour government should consider the massive expansion of gambling in this country when the only people calling for it were greedy American business men beggars belief but by this time he was so far gone he could not see further than the Gordon Brown’s balance sheet.
When George Bush decided to go to war with Iraq Blair’s dragged us in too. The Islamist terrorism unleashed the Big Brother tendency that is never far from the minds of any Labour government. New laws were introduced to detain people without trial, CCTV became almost ubiquitous
The credit crunch brought claims from our leaders that this was a global phenomena that had little to do with their policies ignoring the frequent articles in newspapers such as The Economist describing the dangerous asset price bubble which was being fueled by cheap money and would eventually burst.
When ordinary people protested against the bankers in London the police responded with highly questionable tactics such as kettling and casual violence which may have left one man dead. Yet our leaders supported the outrageous tactics and trotted out the usual platitudes about violent demonstrators.
Luckily the widespread use of video technology by the general public revealed that the violence was mainly perpetrated by the police.
Now we learn that those we trust with the leadership of our country are fiddling their expenses like so many seedy second hand car salesmen.
On The BBC, Radio 4 program Any Questions this week it was suggested that the British people use the upcoming European elections to withhold votes from the major parties. Our leadership on the panel showed the depth of their depravity once again by attempting to scare the public with the spectre of racism and erroneously implying that this meant a vote for the BNP.
Lord Falkner went on to complain that it was a tragedy that New Labour would be judged on the expenses story and that this was a distraction when more important issues were at stake.
Lord Falkner is Talking Bollocks!
There can be no more important issue than whether our leaders are trustworthy. Their policies and promises mean nothing if the are prepared to waive aside their probity and obligations for a few thousand pounds.
While preaching prudence our leaders have led us into the worst economic crisis for decades. They led us into an illegal war that caused the deaths of thousands and severely damaged Britain’s reputation abroad. They continue to introduce ever more draconian laws which erode our civil liberties and they encourage the police to suppress protest using methods not dissimilar to those found in Zimbabwe.
Now we hear that they have been fiddling their expenses.
During the Any Questions program Susan Kramer, MP, suggested that we need a general election. She is right. The British people must be given the chance to decide whether their representatives deserve the confidence and the responsibility with which they are entrusted.
In a BBC article on the police assault on Ian Tomlinson during a G20 protest in The City of London after which Mr. Tomlinson died from a heart attack Peter Smyth, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said some physical confrontation was inevitable during a large protest.
According to the BBC article he told Radio 4′s Today programme: “On a day like that, where there are some protesters who are quite clearly hell-bent on causing as much trouble as they can, there is inevitably going to be some physical confrontation.”
“Sometimes it isn’t clear, as a police officer, who is a protester and who is not.”
Peter Smyth, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation
“I know it’s a generalisation but anybody in that part of the town at that time, the assumption would be that they are part of the protest.
“I accept that’s perhaps not a clever assumption but it’s a natural one.”
Mr. Smyth states that some protesters are clearly hell-bent on causing trouble. He states that it is not clear who is a protester and who is not. He states the police assume that anyone in that part of town at that time would be a protester and then goes on to say that this is perhaps not a clever assumption.
It is not only not clever it is entirely irrelevant. Whether Mr. Tonlinson was a protester or not is no justification for him to be attacked by a policeman.
Mr. Smyth is quite obviously TALKING BOLLOCKS and I wonder how a man with such illiberal, anti-democratic and dangerous opinions could become chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation.
The assault on Mr. Tomlinson became newsworthy because the poor man died but I wonder if we would have heard of him had he lived. We must also wonder how many other people the police assulated that day who’s story has not hit the news.
Last Friday I listened to Any Questions and I think it was Hazel Blears (though I’m not sure) who said that there were a small minority of protesters out to cause trouble and sited this as a justification for the police using heavy handed and, to my mind, illegal tactics such as “kettling”. Kettline is at beast the denial of the right to protest and at worst borders on abduction.
If we pan back a bit here we might consider that the Blair/Brown New Labour catastrophe that overtook Britain has pandered to a powerful elite who became rich off the back of Gordon Brown’s imprudent and arrogant management of the economy. Now that the ghastly hyper-capitalist edifice has crashed around their ears New Labour are using police in riot gear to intimidate protesters while blaming the protesters for the violence.
So far we have seen little violence from protesters but blatant aggression from the police.
Considerring that most crimes committed in Britian’s streets are captured on CCTV and that this crime was committed in an area that is, presumably, seething with CCTV, it will be interesting to see the footage. Either that or some lame excuse about how every single CCTV camera just happened to be pointing the wrong way.
The first head to role from this crime should be the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, Peter Smyth for assuming that all protesters are fair game for the police to assault.
The Guardian newspaper’s timeline of Mr. Tomlinson’s walk home from work
The Guardian also has footage from a different angle.
Below is the response by Peter Smyth to a protest registerred at the web site of the MPF.
Thank you for your e-mail.
If you listened to the BBC broadcast from which Press
Association cherry-picked a couple of quotes, you will recall that I had specifically
declined to comment upon the events surrounding Mr Tomlinson.
I was instead invited by the presenter to voice observations
on the sort of occurrences which are encountered policing large protests in
general.
Reports about my comments should be seen in this context.
In numerous interviews yesterday I explained that I
am not allowed to make any comment in relation to an ongoing investigation,
I also repeatedly asked for the officers involved to come forward and to cooperate
with the investigation.
I read an article on the BBC web site today quoting
an interview with Peter Smyth, your chaiman, where he stated that some protesters
are hell-bent on causing trouble, that it is not clear who is a protester
and who is not and that the police assume that anyone in that part of town
at that time would be a protester.
Your chairman has completely missed the point. Whether
Mr. Tonlinson was or wa not a protester is no justification for him to be
assulated by the police.
I wonder how a man with such illiberal, anti-democratic
and dangerous opinions could become chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation.
Regards
Here is another video showing police hitting a woman during the same G20 protest. If you watch the video, in the background you can see that just before the woman is hit a yong man is being pushed around by police.
And we should not forget previous police assaults on the general public: Kettling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kettling is a police tactic wherein protesters are prevented from leaving an
area by cordons of police. Peaceful protesters, potential rioters and bystanders
alike are corralled once they have congregated into one or more larger group(s).
Although large groups are difficult to control this can be done by concentrations
of police. The tactic is to prevent the large group breaking into smaller splinters
which have to be individually chased down and for the policing to break into
multiple small battles.[1] Once the kettle has been formed the cordon is tightened
including with baton charges to restrict the territory occupied by the protesters.
The cordon is then maintained for a number of hours in which those within the
cordon are denied food, water and toilet facilities, the aim is to leave would
be violent protesters too tired to do anything but want to go home.[2]
Used in the UK in the may-day riots and the G20 summit, kettling has been criticized
as irritating otherwise-peaceful protesters to the point where they will riot
to break free of the ‘kettles’ (some of which were held in place for several
hours) and for detaining law-abiding citizens.[
Art Photography
Police spy on you at petrol stations
Tags: bollocks, cameras, CCTV, democracy, neighbourhood policing, neighbourly, Orwellian, petrol stations, police, spy
Where was the informed debate on this?
I saw this at a petrol station recently. OK, I can see that it is in the interest of the petrol station owner to log the registration plates of cars in case they drive off without paying. But I can recall no informed debate about whether this data should be automatically made available to the police!
Democracy my arse! Gradually, using fear of crime and terrorism, the state increases the control that it has over the individual. “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” whine the naive and trusting. This is bollocks. History shows that if authorities are given powers they will abuse them.
It’s also a bit rich to advertise it as “neighbourhood policing”. You’d have to have truly Orwellian mind to consider a nationwide network of CCTV cameras to be neighbourly.
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