UK 2017: under surveillance (Report on what life will be like in the UK in 10 years)

[JohnyCanuck]

UK 2017: under surveillance
By Neil Mackay

IT is a chilling, dystopian account of what Britain will look like 10 years from now: a world in which Fortress Britain uses fleets of tiny spy-planes to watch its citizens, of Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice, of an underclass trapped in sink-estate ghettos under constant state surveillance, of worker drones forced to take on the lifestyle and values of the mega-corporation they work for, and of the super-rich hiding out in gated communities constantly monitored by cameras and private security guards.

This Orwellian vision of the future was compiled on the orders of the UK's information commissioner - the independent watchdog meant to guard against government and private companies invading the privacy of British citizens and exploiting the masses of information currently held on each and every one of us - by the Surveillance Studies Network, a group of academics.

On Friday, this study, entitled A Report on the Surveillance Society, was picked over by a select group of government mandarins, politicians, police officers and academics in Edinburgh. It is unequivocal in its findings, with its first sentence reading simply: "We live in a surveillance society." The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, endorses the report. He says: "Today, I fear that we are, in fact, waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us."

The academics who compiled the study based their vision of the future not on wild hypotheses but on existing technology, statements made about the intentions of government and private companies and studies by other think tanks, regulators, professional bodies and academics.

The report authors say that they believe the key theme of the future will be "pervasive surveillance" aimed at tracking and controlling people and pre-empting behaviour. The authors also say that their glimpse of the future is "fairly conservative. The future spelled out in the report is nowhere near as dystopian and authoritarian as it could be."

Continued at:
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1741454.0.0.php

George Orwell, take a bow.

[ixion]

1. Ever see "Brazil"? It'll be something like that

without the humor, of course.

[applegrove]

2. I love the idea of criminals unable to comit crime because they will

be caught as they get away by street. Sorry that is just me I know.

[krispos42]

5. Until the definition of "crime" takes on new and sinister meanings

Like, say, questioning your government.

And of course, the individual police officers monitoring the people will be able to make a forture in blackmail and/or selling select bits of data to the rich and powerful.

Or, you begin 'fitting' profiles, so that your entire life is ruined because some body or computer figures you're statistically likely to do something criminal.



Not that any of this will work, of course. Britian's crime and homicide rates are at or near record levels, and that's despite the assurances of the government that putting 4 million public-area surveillence cameras across Britian (400,000 in London alone) and banning handguns and 'assault weapons' would drop the levels.

[WinkyDink]

8. By definition, "criminals unable to comit (sic) crime " are NOT CRIMINALS.

Do you grasp that concept?

[applegrove]

9. Yup. Fewer crimes. Or less personal crimes.

[Andre II]

3. Well, the spy-drones are already surveilling London now ... n/t

[lovuian]

4. Peek a Boo I see you and soon Hear you too

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hDADAW3uBlI

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DzOjsrjUwcE

[backscatter712]

6. George Orwell had it right.

Before long, they'll be revising the English language to make it doubleplus good.

[Liberal In Texas]

7. Reminds me of the book, "Market Forces" by Richard K. Morgan.

It's the mid-21st century, and the United Kingdom finds itself host to a gaggle of ultra-capitalistic investment firms, who engage in brutally amoral manipulation of third-world economies, up to and including actual financing of civil wars (euphemistically called "conflict investment"). If the faction backed by the firm wins, the stockholders get a cut of that country's economy.

There's no welfare state left, a job marks the ordinary person out for violence, except for a few who live in armed gated communities in terror of the rest of the population.

British author.