CVOne will be installing listening CCTV cameras, to be used on the High Street.The cameras will be able to detect conversations 100 yards away. The technology comes from Holland, but Holland has stricter privacy laws than the UK – there, they can only record voices in short bursts. Last year, the UK’s Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, spoke out against the use of listening CCTV in public spaces.
The rhetoric is that we're in a slow slide into a surveillance society.
It's not that slow.
We already have video monitoring of classrooms, fingerprinting in schools, and plans for a national ID card database. GPs doubt the security of the new "spine" of the NHS IT network, fearing it will be vulnerable to hackers and unauthorised access by public officials from outside the NHS and social care. We have the monitoring of our buying habits (supermarket cards), and the monitoring of our travel habits (Oyster, in London).
Privacy is being given away, bit by bit, and there has been a lack of public consultation over the introduction of listening CCTV in Coventry.
1 comment:
'Listening' CCTV gives lots of opportunities for 'accidentally' spreading duff information. You can hardly be prosecuted for saying something in the street when you didn't know it was being recorded.
In fact, one could very easily completely screw the system up. Teehee.
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