• Media Enquiries

    07505 448925(24hr)

London riots: comfortingly, the CCTV images will show from many angles just how bad the damage was

London on fire

As I write, riots are raging in many parts of the capital.

In amongst the principled arguments against excessive surveillance, we at Big Brother Watch have always mounted two additional, practical points: that all this surveillance often doesn’t work, and it absorbs capital that might have been spent in other, more productive ways.

Both authoritarian opponents and purists on our own side have sometimes criticised us for this. But surely it’s obvious that:

1) Not one aspect of our ubiquitous surveillance network, erected to watch all of us all the time, just in case, has done anything to protect Londoners in this, our hour of greatest need; and

2) In an environment in which only a finite pot of capital exists to spend on any given portfolio, that tremendously expensive network soaked up vast amounts of capital – at least some of which might have been spent on training more police officers to deal with these situations?

By Alex Deane

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Home
  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=589310526 Alex Deane

    As I hit “post” yet another politician was boasting about how CCTV was going to ensure that “later, people will be caught”. Which seemed to be an immense help to the people fleeing from the fire on the screen.

  • http://twitter.com/davidbeandotorg David Bean

    Cross-posted: The other problem is that CCTV creates the risk that the police might – as I’ve heard some speculation they have – actually be content to allow the violence to go on, on the assumption that they’ll be able to use CCTV to catch and prosecute the offenders later on. Even if they are, it’s not the point. The first duty of the police is to protect the public, not fill in enough forms to net a clear-up. Being the police force doesn’t make you immune to moral hazard.

  • http://profiles.google.com/sadbutmadlad Sad But Mad Lad

    What is catching people is not CCTV but media images and photos taken by the public. Also pictures of the looters taken by themselves and posted on social media sites.