Big Brother is watching you!

London is the worlds "most watched city" with upwards of 500,000 CCTV cameras. The controversy here is nothing new with many labelling our 'surveilance state' as nothing short of Orwellian. This recent BBC article puts it into perspective. The article goes on to talk about DNA profiling with 7% of the UK population having their DNA sample on record compared to other nations (USA is 0.5%)! Scary stuff.

The main purpose of this post is to question the use of CCTV as a crime fighting measure. The government are adamant that CCTV has a place in crime fighting but have they gone too far? In today's London Metro newspaper an article explained how the use of CCTV was stripping officers of the powers necessary to do their jobs. Although the article explains that this is currently affecting only traffic police, the potential for CCTV to be seen as an infallable form of crime prevention is nothing short of terrifying.

Does CCTV actually fall under the category of proactive policing? It is hard to tell but it certainly distances the populous from both law enforcement and the government as a whole. If used properly as an aid to real policing, the type of policing that is designed to bridge the gap between community and law enforcement, then I'm honestly all for it, but I can't help but feel that CCTV is just one of a long line of measures the government is trying to enforce in a reactionary way (knee-jerk policies from this government are nothing new). Take for example last year's plans to monitor the country's emails and phone conversations (see BBC article).

As a country we need to ask ourselves what we want to achieve in policing, do we want to promote fear as a preventative measure to crime or do we want to tackle the problems in society that lead to crimes being commited? Although the government and the last mayor of London Ken Livingstone made steps to addressing the latter, how committed are they to maintaining that in light of the current economic situation when a camera cost less than a human being?

I guess the question is, are we seeing the first signs of a move towards policing from behind a computer screen? I hope not.