No-one watches the Watchers…

Posted on November 15, 2007
Filed Under Society |

My wife works for the local housing association; she told be a somewhat disturbing story recently. As many people probably know - the UK has the most CCTV in the world. Our town is pretty small, but you can’t walk down any street without appearing on camera somewhere. Before we moved house I only needed to step out of the front door in order to appear on camera. Now we have moved away onto the outskirts of a smaller town - we have to go that little bit further…to the end of the road.

Anyway, the housing officers at the association look after all the houses that the state gives out to people in need. They get a bit of a rough job as they have to deal with a lot of troubled people. So the story my wife told me about was a particular woman who was causing a fair about of trouble for her neighbors. Now the police would normally get involved, but instead they have unofficially asked the housing officers to monitor certain individuals via the CCTV systems.

So you never really know who is actually watching you any longer. It’s execpted that those in “authority” would be the Watchers - but there are just so many ramifications when that power is given to an office-worker.