Watch this
When I get a little paranoid I like to remember that we’re a nation of people watchers – It’s just a national pass-time, not the slow, steady erosion of personal liberties.
That has to be the reason why we are the most watched civilisation ever to grace this planet… it can’t be because we do anything particularly entertaining, the weather’s too poor for that.
Apparently there is one CCTV camera for every fourteen of us…
… I don’t think that’s good enough. In this time of great technological fecundity, surely it should be our right to at least have one per person. Is there a CCTV shortage that I am unaware of?
And why not go further. If you were to reverse that figure, fourteen cameras for every person, there would be no reason to ever miss an enthralling minute of what we do.
But it still has to be watched and there’s a limit to how many television sets a small, balding man in a darkened room can watch at once.
Ah! You could install a viewing box in every home. People already watch that sort of thing anyway, they’ll love it. You give them a remote control with a big red button on it that they have to press when they see a crime.
It would be great. You’d be able to do away with the police force, or at least strip it down to just people that pick other people up and bring them to the cells. That would save a lot of money… money that could be given out as prizes for capturing criminals.
I know, I know, it sounds too good to be true… but I promise you, we’re doing our best to make this wonderfully hellish dream a reality.
Oh man. The scary part is, now that you mention it, I bet a lot of people would really go for it.
Indeed they do.
It’s the classic, ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide’ argument.
I have… got something to hide, that is, it’s called my life.
Did you hear that we recently voted to increase our detention without charge limit to 42 days? There was broad public support for that too, despite the lack of any evidence presented to that effect.
The figure seems so arbitary some have suggested it was lifted from The Hitchhikers Guide.
Even MI5 refused to support it. But hey, just because there isn’t a need for it now, right?
They probably figured out the highest figure they could pass off as reasonable and just went with that.
And they can’t watch you if you never go outside. They can only track your internet traffic.
You’d think… but alas not.
The things that can be done inside your home here are also quite invasive. For instance, the local council can ruummage through my trash and the local authorities can heatmap my house to see if I have any equipment for growing things I shouldn’t (backed up by looking at electricity bills).
Note to self: grow some shrubs or herbs under a sun lamp in a cupboard, just to mess with ‘em
Get yourself a sunbed whilst you’re at it… and whilst I wouldn’t advise using it for tanning purposes, it will quite happily warm up croissants.
A good infrared camera can see through a few inches of steel and concrete. Roof shingles and wood are even easier.
Paranoia is now a mainstream political orientation. Who would’ve thought it? Other than Orwell, I mean. And Huxley. And Wilson, Heller, Kafka, Stevenson… okay, I guess a lot of people saw that coming. Still, it’s a nice time for the surveillance companies.
Yup, we’re living in a literary wonderland.
Although I would like to point out that a mere 16 hours after posting this comic we have a result:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7468430.stm
Oh, how nice. You have the power to snoop on the residents of your community, but try to restrain yourself a little. I mean, no-one’s going to make you restrain yourself, but do your best.
I’ve got to say, the CCTV thing you’ve guys got over there freaks me a little.
On the other hand, it makes Torchwood more fun to watch because it makes half their mystery-solving possible so….
As it should. It freaks me a little too.
Perhaps the reason we have so many is Torchwood… for the continuing output of the BBC, it is entirely necessary to pepper the UK wit surveilance cameras.
The report I linked to up there ^ suggested that a lot of the cameras, brought in under anti-terrorist legislation, are now used to monitor the most trivial things. it would give me more hope to think that they were there to provide easy storylines for British Sci-fi.
Do you watch the doctor?
I’m so pissed off they killed Owen and Toshiko. I mean Owen was just getting interesting and what the hell kind of show can they do with just the three dorks that are left?
Plus the next season’s only FIVE EPISODES?!? DAMN YOUR ASS-BACKWARDS BRITISH TV!
Actually, there are 20 episodes, but we keep fifteen to ourselves. It’s one of the perks of being British… we have a homegrown stash of sci-fi.
Oh, that reminds me, did you ever get the chance to read Never Let Me Go?
Not yet but if you hold on a minute I can tell where it is on my list…
…
…
It’s four books away – Fermat’s Last Theorem, Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age, A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World’s First Office Computer, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time… and then Never Let Me Go.
I imagine Em will get to it before me, although she reads like lightning so will be done with it by the time I get there (estimated next wednesday-ish).
As you might notice, the list is quite non-fiction heavy, about 3 to 1 on average (over my entire list). I get lost in fiction and daydream too much whilst I read it (and by that I mean for the duration of the book, not just whilst I’m physically reading), so whilst I can tear through textbooks and biographies and such, even a short story will dislocate me, thought wise.
I know what you mean — that’s honestly part of why I read so much more fiction than non-fiction: I think it adds to the ferment that makes my art decent.The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao had me musing and fermenting for weeks. It was great.
Let me know how Electronic Brains is: that one’s been on my list for some time, but it never seems to make it all the way to the top, it always float in the “oh! I’ll read that one soon… maybe next week,” category. Hmmm, maybe I’ll push it up and read it next (though the package of e-books I just found the other day might stop me — everything Gibson ever wrote! Well, save the new one).
’tis you that makes your art decent… in fact what’s with the use of ‘decent’? You need to be a little bit more bombastic. Either way is good:
1. I make my art decent.
2. Reading books makes my art ****ing excellent.
I go through a process called sponge and splurge. It’s pretty self-explainatory. I spend a few weeks burried in other people’s work, music, art, film and television, and then I spend a week regurgitating all of the half-digested ideas before playing around with them. Currently I’m sponging, which is not a euphemism.
I think “splurge” would make a better euphemism anyways.
The last episode is when I decided to stop calling Owen “the little troll doll with medical tools”. I’m not too upset about him but Tashiko really shouldn’t have pinned her life on that idiot. The current rumor running around is that Martha’s going to replace Owen. I don’t know how she could do that and keep her “no guns” promise to the Doctor, though.
And we know Rose can’t join because her actor’s too busy being a prostitute.
I do, in fact, watch the Doctor. And I watched the Sarah Jane Adventures, too. Right now we’re a week or two beyond you on Doctor Who. I’m sort of bummed that next season will only be a collection of specials but I’m excited for the big Companion round-up at the end of this season.
I am such a freaking geek.
this sounds a lot like the time my friend and i came up with a miraculous plan to fight obesity and global warming and evergy crises at the same time. another too-good-to-be-true plan to save the world.
You should get a job on my local council… they’ll pay you well and you’ll never be held accountable for what you have (or have not) done.
Your plan… do it have anything to do with Soilent Green?
it hath not, but ill make my friend a proposition and a new plan will likely be developed. although its flaws will probably slightly more obvious in this plan than the last.
I’m really torn on the CCTV idea. On the one hand, it really does make an impact in crime prevention, that’s not just cloud-cuckoo talk. On the other, yeah, reasonable expectation of privacy. I doubt CCTV would ever fly in Canada, since our Charter of Rights has pretty intense protections for search and seizure… but, there’s a “justification of infringement” clause in said Charter, so it’s possible that if an area was known to be a high-crime area, CCTV could be allowed. Also areas where higher security is required (train stations, for example).
J Gray is right, though: Torchwood would be much less interesting without.
My proposal for CCTV is fairly simple in principle, but probably unlikely to ever fly: allow them to record, and store data in a huge database protected by some kind of independent agency, maybe internationally monitored. All that data is there, but it’s only available with a warrant. Cops can even watch a live stream, -if they have a warrant-. That means there’s judicial oversight on the network, same as if they want to search your home or person, but while keeping many of the security benefits.
You see, what you are proposing is reasonable… which is it’s main flaw, we dont want ‘reasonable’ we want knee-jerk paranoia.
The Data Protection Act was supposed to ensure that sort of thing, but in reality there’s too much beurocracy attached to it… that and the fact that anyone can set up a CCTV camera.
Information is power and any form of government, whether local or national is going to fight hard to keep hold of the sort of omnipotence they get from high level surveillance.
The thing that really gets me is that you would think with such a high visibility, crime rates would have plummeted, but evidence shows that if it has, it is rarely to do with the presence or evidence provided by the increase in the number of cameras – It’s true that some cameras reduce crime in the immediate vicinity, but putting up more cameras has little cumulative effect in those areas – That suggests that they are obviously mis-managed and perhaps poorly utilised and rather than address this it seems far easier just to stick some more up.
Oh, nearly forgot to mention that these guys,
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/14556/15580/music-band-cctv-music-video.phtml
used our freedom of information act to film their own music video using footage filmed by CCTV.
Very clever, but that’s another potential problem with the CCTV network: eventually, that information -and your personal image and location- can get into anyone’s hands.
Once again, what’s the expectation of privacy?
Ooh, news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/7471140.stm
Massive citizen-powered surveillance was envisioned five years ago in Patrick Farley’s electric sheep comix ( http://web.archive.org/web/20050507140206/e-sheep.com/main.shtml , “The Spiders”) – this was apparently a vision of ‘transparent society’ or open-source warfare.
Great link… thanks, it always makes a webcomicker feel good to have someone show them their ideas done by a more talented webcomicker.
Seriously, Mr Farley’s work is really good, and I wasn’t aware of it, so I’m grateful for something new to read… I think he’s taken it through to the logical conclusion too.
Open-source warfare… that’ll be fun… and hopefully multi-platform.
I like your compulsive listing of games, by the way, what percentage would you say you’ve completed?
Of the physical-media games? Er, maybe half of them. I’ve completed maybe 500 games if we’re counting freeware and (cough) borrowed ones.
Top stuff.