Big Brother or Big Brothers ?

It seems you cant get past 30 days without the news kicking around another fear uncertainty and doubt campaign over the level of transparency and openness which the “Kids of today” are living their lives.  We , whomever we are,  give them nick names like the Facebook Nation or the Myspace Generation and we snigger a little. Which may seem a little hypocritical when we take no notice of the fact that living in the UK places everyone under some level of constant surveillance by way of the multiplicity of CCTV.

It  appears that CCTV has become the lazy policeman to our society and whilst It may seem a saving in costs  to enable one operator to cover a wide area it has become the thin end of a wedge which leads to stretching an operators  until they fail. Much CCTV evidence seems to be used after the event and does nothing to reduce or negate the crimes occurring. Whilst I disagree with Christian that this is a tool over which the “Man” can keep control and manage the populace. I do agree that its prevalence has reduced is efficacy.

My personal preference is to open the CCTV images  to constant public review and scrutiny . Since those  CCTV  cameras are mounted in public spaces they are observing public activities so  why not allow members of the public an equal access to the views ? Surely this would provide the benefit that the operators and monitors of those cameras would be aware that their own  conduct was being monitored. I imagine it would be difficult for organised crime to subvert those operators if they were aware that an unknown number of eyes were also watching what the operators were watching.

As to Christians QIK post  I would suggest we have  become Big Brothers unto each other. Our capturing, broadcasting, commenting, flagging and tagging of events that we experience has made us the  Big Brothers to each other and ourselves.

If this topic interest you then I would strongly recommend you keep following Ourmaninside as well as the writings of   Cory Doctorow who has been highlighting the issues of Amateur photography and unwanted surveillance for some years now.

Thanks for reading, and keep watching.