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Our surveillance state – intrusive and ineffective

BanksyCCTV Two stories have caught my eye this morning that provide a perfect summation of the current progress of Britain's surveillance state.

The first comes from the Daily Telegraph via Manchester:

Man can't prove ID with ID card

Darren McTeggart tried to use the £30 ID card to pick up a replacement credit card from a branch of Santander in Manchester, where the scheme was rolled out on a voluntary basis last year.

Mr McTeggart, one of the first people to get the card, said: “They said it was not on their list of approved ID.

“I sent an email to the head office, but they wouldn’t budge. The government has been pushing this card on TV and elsewhere so it beggars belief why the bank won’t accept it.”

The second comes courtesy of the Gloucester Citizen:

Broken CCTV missed vandal attack

Businessman Barry Clayton was left fuming when his shop window was smashed and he discovered a CCTV camera opposite was not working.

He said: “On Saturday night, one of our shop windows was kicked in. We had hoped that it might have been caught on camera. There would have been a really good chance of getting some evidence off it.

“But we’ve looked at the camera – which was just a few yards away high up on a wall – today and yesterday and it’s facing the wall that it’s mounted on. Its main field of vision will just be the cream-coloured wall that it’s on.”

So there we have it. Mr McTeggart presumably foolishly jumped at the chance to get an ID card because the government had told him that it was a much simpler and easier form of identification; while Mr Clayton had always assumed that the council CCTV camera opposite his shop would deter criminals but catch any who chanced an attack on his shop.

Intrusive and ineffective – Big Brother Watch's surveillance State of the Union.

By Dylan Sharpe

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Big Brother Watch Posted in CCTV, ID cards
  • http://ampers.blogspot.com Andrew Ampers Taylor

    Man can’t prove ID with ID card
    Actually this is no big deal. Santander are different to other banks as their stupidity isn’t the fault of underpaid staff, but stems from their directors.
    Did you know that, if you have three bank accounts with Santander all at a single Branch and want to open a fourth account, you still have to go through the rigmarole of showing the required sets of ID?
    Ampers Taylor

  • http://jess-the-dog.blogspot.com/ Jess The Dog

    Good on Santander! I bank with them now, having withdrawn my custom from the state-owned and utterly rubbish RBS and HBOS.