Well I’ve been in London a couple of days now and how lovely it is to see the London cabs whipping around and how vibrant is the life. On top of this the following cannot be missed…
- When I arrived at the small B&B where I am staying I was welcomed with a CCTV camera stating that ‘I am being watched’.
- When I got on a bus, there was a sign of a big smilely, reminding me ‘to smile for the camera as I am being watched’.
- On the train I spoke with a young chap that told me that the CCTV cameras can talk now too, so if a drunk knocks over a bin in a shopping centre -for example- the camera will request that he places it back!
- The news is full of the terror attacks
- The news is full of the term ‘are we sleepwalking into a surveillance age’.
- Everywhere you go are CCTV and police…. makes you feel secure.
LOL surveillance age… they are already there in my opinion. I agree with what Bruce Schneier stated at a talk I attended at the LSE earlier this year, in that we are on the cusp of a ‘new surveillance age’. In that today we can see the cameras, tomorrow we will not!
Then I ask myself, will anybody really mind in the future. After all:
- the schools have CCTV cameras in the schools as a vandalism preventative measure
- The parents are filming their children at nursery school, and this they access on-line
- The parents are tracking their kids via their mobile phones…
Tomorrow the kids won’t care, they are so used to being watched and tracked!