West End Extra - Letters to the Editor: Big Brother watching is a big deal to worry about

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

West End Extra - Letters to the Editor
Published: 9 November 2007

Big Brother watching is a big deal to worry about

• IN her remarks about CCTV on this page last week (CCTV is now a menace for law-abiding citizens), Katherine William-Powlett highlights all too accurately the sinister way in which we are being railroaded towards the menace of a full-blooded police state where creepy operatives in secret bunkers peer at the rest of us through thousands of cameras like so many Peeping Toms.
And soon, if they get their way, they will bug us with lamp-post listening devices, hack into our emails, listen to our phone calls, and require us all to provide a DNA sample and carry a pass-card.
We are confronted with a hellish alliance of authoritarian officials and corporate greed as private companies hijack these surveillance operations and use them to trawl for money.
Official propaganda has it that they are looking for enemies of the state and common criminals but the only people they can actually identify with their clumsy cameras are legitimate citizens who they hammer for parking offences, littering, putting out the wrong rubbish, anything they deem to be “anti-social behaviour” and presumably, as soon as the bugs are in place, talking out of turn.
Terrorists and criminals are not stupid enough to have legitimate addresses, register their vehicles, sign up for council tax, have national insurance numbers or otherwise allow themselves to be identified.
The fact that control of the streets has been lost, in spite of our being one of the most surveilled populations in the world outside of North Korea, proves that these Soviet-inspired operations are
(ironically) money-
making enterprises in disguise.
Far from aiding state security this nastiness merely alienates law-abiding citizens and jeopardises what shreds of goodwill remain.
“If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to worry about” is the howl of the dictator echoing down the centuries.
Martin Kennedy
Brewer Street, W1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment:

Your comments: