We're away!

Thanks for dropping by to see us here at Big Brother Watch.

Alex is in Sierra Leone until 7 August and Dylan is away on his honeymoon, so we won't be posting for a week!

In that time, please feel free to use the comments on this post as an open thread if you want to talk about the issues we discuss on this site, take a moment to look into the archives and see what we've been writing about recently, or drop us a line and we'll get back to you when we're back in the office.

If you're after media contact or some feisty up-to-the-minute chat, consider dropping by to see our friends at No2ID or Privacy International.

Hope you miss us! :)

Comments

[andy5759]

You will be missed by us, although someone, somewhere knows where you are!

[Gareth]

To reinforce the obviousness of body scanners storing images here is an admission from The U.S. Marshals Service:

http://tinyurl.com/33vg9ft

"For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded."

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes." The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports."

[Reasonal Person]

This website and it's owners make me feel physically sick. I have been fortunate to know a case solved by my local police force through CCTV evidence. The crime hasn't been reversed but the criminals have been brought to justice. All thanks to CCTV and the great work by my local force.

Now, I'm sure the same camera that solved this crime captured a number of people. Perhaps even a few people that shouldn't have been where they were when the camera was in action. So what? If you are not committing a serious crime, IT DOES NOT MATTER IF YOU ARE CAUGHT ON CCTV. The police will not knock on your door to tell you you are 'a naughty person'. Only if you have been proved to be committing a crime.

The people that run this website must either be serious criminals with a dark agenda or decent people that are completely ignorant. I hope you feel shame for all the rapists and murderers that roam free because of your insensitive actions. You truly are the detritus of our society. Shame on you.

[Redacted]

@reasonal person "The people that run this website must either be serious criminals with a dark agenda or decent people that are completely ignorant."

Oh come off it. Britain used to be widely known as a free country, and some of us would like Britain to return to that happy state, there isn't anything wicked or ignorant about that. Our ancestors struggled and in some cases gave up their lives in order to achieve that freedom. Freedom means tolerating differences of opinion and not being forced to live according to somebody else's instructions in an oppressive environment.

So I don't like CCTV - according to you that's my fault, but it isn't, it's normal, sane, human nature to feel threatened by surveillance. Surveillance is a hostile act. It accuses and threatens everybody, in fact especially the innocent, because surveillance is the infastructure of dictatorship, and dictators are most afraid of the innocent and are always very keen to find out anything about them that may be used for coercion, usually they are not above misrepresenting "evidence".

I often recall that surveillance didn't seem to be considered that needful until President G W Bush came to power. Then suddenly pervasive mass surveillance was considered indispensible. Could there be a connection here?

Fear breeds more fear. Face it and overcome it, that's how you become free, not by putting the nation under surveilance and locking yourself up in a mental prison of your own imagining.

As for the Police, I think that it is unwise to generalise about them as a body. Some are brave and conscientious, some are cynical, some are inept. Just like any other walk of life. I always take time to get to know my local police and generally support their efforts. Through talking with them I have learned that they are nowhere near as excited by CCTV as you are, they see it as useful in a small minority of cases. It is questionable whether the small benefit is worth the destruction of the sense of liberty in our public spaces that pervasive surveillance necessarily causes.

[Anon]

LOL@ 'Reasonal Person'

I work in law enforcement, and while I don't agree with everything BBW says, I agree with their right to say it.

The privacy vs 'criminal rights' debate is highly topical and becoming moreso with the progress is technology and government getting bigger. BBW is a helpful check and balance.

You should lighten up.

I like it :)