December 17, 2009
Big Brother is Having a Happy Christmas
1984 may now be twenty five years ago – but that nightmare Orwellian vision is closer to the truth now than even George Orwell can have envisaged in his darker moments. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry the other day when I heard about the naked scanner being trialled at Manchester Airport.
In case you missed this little treasure on the BBC, passengers lucky enough to be passing through Manchester airport will be giving away more secrets than they bargained for. Weapons of mass destruction such as toothpaste and mouthwash will of course be clearly visible – as will guns. But so also will false boobs (if passengers have them) and genitalia. If Mae West works in airport security at Manchester, she need never ask again if that is a gun in your pocket – or if you are just pleased to see her.
This latest outrage is on top of what must be a national scandal – the sheer volume of CCTV cameras snooping on us wherever we go. I wonder if they ever prove any use to anybody. The same BBC news bulletin that cheerfully told us about the naked scanner, used CCTV footage of Irish criminals using a digger to subtly remove cash dispensers by demolishing the wall and loading the cash machine on to a lorry. That’s the only use they seem to have – gratuitous television long after the event has happened.
I am ashamed to admit I once volunteered to be snooped on 24 hours a day. To reduce the insurance on my car I fitted a tracking device. Only to find I was being watched and checked up upon because I had the temerity to take my own car abroad. Yes, a GPS vehicle tracking device can be useful if the afore-mentioned car is stolen. But is the complete loss of privacy too big a price to pay for a reduced insurance premium (and possession of a gizmo 99.9% of people never need.
But surely the worst example of invasive snooping is the mysterious world of RFIA tracking. Like many things sinister, this has its heritage in the armaments industry. It is even really rather useful if you want to know why your parcel has not been delivered. Or indeed that it has – and been left somewhere stupid. But now we are being told that barcode technology can be use to track customer movements – and the location of items after they have been bought and paid for.
Again, one presumes this has a tenuous usefulness if the said item is stolen. But what if it is not? As we move into the second decade of the 21st century, the level of surveillance going on in the once open British Society is nothing short of a scandal
Related stories to Big Brother is Having a Happy Christmas
Next: Snow Use Grumbling »
Visited 590 times, 1 so far today
Comments
Leave a Reply