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George Orwell Was Right: Spy Cameras See Britons' Every Move

By Nick Allen

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- It's Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England,
and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the
school year, known as Freshers' Week.

One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a
disembodied voice booms out from above:

``You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!'' The confused
student obeys as his friends look bewildered.

``People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they
see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience
and comply,'' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council
who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its
cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee
cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.

Almost 70 years after George Orwell created the all-seeing dictator
Big Brother in the novel ``1984,'' Britons are being watched as never
before. About 4.2 million spy cameras film each citizen 300 times a
day, and police have built the world's largest DNA database. Prime
Minister Tony Blair said all Britons should carry biometric
identification cards to help fight the war on terror.

``Nowhere else in the free world is this happening,'' said Helena
Kennedy, a human rights lawyer who also is a member of the House of
Lords, the upper house of Parliament. ``The American public would
find such inroads into civil liberties wholly unacceptable.''

During the past decade, the government has spent 500 million pounds
($1 billion) on spy cameras and now has one for every 14 citizens,
according to a September report prepared for Information Commissioner
Richard Thomas by the Surveillance Studies Network, a panel of U.K.
academics.

Who's In Charge?

At a single road junction in the London borough of Hammersmith, there
are 29 cameras run by police, government, private companies and
transport agencies. Police officers are even trying out video cameras
mounted on their heads.

``We've got to stand back and see where technology is taking us,''
said Thomas, whose job is to protect people's privacy. ``Humans must
dictate our future, not machines.''

Blair said citizens have to sacrifice some freedoms to fight
terrorism, illegal immigration and identity fraud.

``We have a modern world that we are living in, with new and
different types of crime,'' Blair said Nov. 6 at a press conference
in London. ``If we don't use technology in order to combat it, then
we won't be fighting crime effectively.''

Constant Monitoring

In the bowels of New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the London
police force, a windowless room contains a giant bank of TV screens
where the city is monitored around the clock. At the touch of a
button, officers can focus on any neighborhood and zoom in on
people's faces.

Police hunting the killer of five prostitutes in Suffolk were able to
gather 10,000 hours of footage from in and around Ipswich.

By 2016, there will be cameras using facial recognition technology
embedded in lampposts, according to the Surveillance Studies report.
Unmanned spy planes will monitor the movements of citizens, while
criminals and the elderly will be implanted with microchips to track
their movements, the report says.

``The level of surveillance in this country should shock people,''
said David Murakami Wood, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle
who headed the study. ``It is infiltrating everything we do.''

Wood is also concerned about the U.K.'s growing DNA database. The
files contain the genetic codes of more than 3.8 million people, or
5.2 percent of the population. By comparison, the U.S. has the DNA
records of 0.5 percent of its residents.

DNA matches helped solve 45,000 crimes in the U.K. last year,
including 422 murders, 645 rapes and 9,000 burglaries, according to
the Home Office. But the database isn't foolproof.

Burglar Who Wasn't

Police who knocked on Raymond Easton's door in Swindon, England, in
1999 were certain he had committed burglary at a house 200 miles (300
kilometers) away. DNA found at the scene was a 37 million-to-1 match
with Easton's sample, which had been taken three years earlier.

Easton, a former construction worker, had Parkinson's disease and
could barely dress himself. He was still charged. Further tests
proved he had never been to Bolton, where the burglary occurred,
according to the Greater Manchester police.

``Britain's DNA database is spiraling out of control,'' said Helen
Wallace, deputy director of GeneWatch U.K., which campaigns for
responsible use of genetic science. ``It could allow an unprecedented
level of government surveillance.''

Other government plans include loading the confidential medical
records of 50 million patients in the state-run health system onto a
central database without their consent.

Most controversial of all are Blair's biometric ID cards linked to a
national register holding every citizen's fingerprints, iris or face
scan. Starting in 2010, anyone renewing or applying for a passport
will have to get one.

``Desperate for some sort of legacy, the prime minister has nothing
to offer but Blair's Big Brother Britain,'' said Phil Booth, national
coordinator of the anti-ID card group NO2ID.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Allen in London at
nallen14@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: December 21, 2006 19:00 EST