Hey...Pssst! Don't Look Now, But Your Being Watched!

  There's no hiding it, technology is everyware! Literally everyware!

Nope, those are not spelling mistakes, it is actually a term coined by Adam Greenfield in his book 'Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing'. In it he describes how we as a civilization will become so engrossed in technology that we will not even notice we're using it. This is true, to an extent, of surveillance cameras in our Urban Space.

   When you travel around in your own little world, who is watching? Or even, how many people are watching? We in Britain are the most surveillance heavy country in the world with an averaging number of 4.2m CCTV cameras*

*source from BBC 2nd November 2006

    There are some debates over whether these are actually doing the jobs that they were meant for when implemented into society in relation to their cost to the government and to the general tax payers. In an article on Ezine Articles,

"In the UK, where an average person may be watched 300 times a day by the prevalent closed circuit television systems, numerous case studies paired with crime statistics have been used by Britain's Home Office to determine the effectiveness of these CCTV systems and to see how well CCTV saves time and money for their police force. In fact, from 1999 to 2001, the British government spent £170 million (approximately $250 million) for closed circuit television security schemes in town and in city centers, car parks, crime hot spots and in residential areas."

  From this quote, the amount of money spent is not always benefiting society in terms of keeping crime rates down. But they are there for a 'peace of mind' for the society, they feel safer walking down a dark street, this is one of the many benefits. They also allow the police to get to the scene of a crime (usually fights caused by ruffians on a Saturday night) without the wait for someone watching to call 999. I agree, there are numerous positive points as well as many negative ones, usually involved in money from the tax payer. But the reason why we pay tax as a nation is that if a day comes when we need the security system, it is there for us. It is exactly the same as the NHS.

Scrap the NHS - I'm going private

   If the people who argue against paying tax for the CCTV system that doesn't benefit from their services then surely they should feel the same about the NHS? They are paying money so when, if they are injured, they can be fixed-up freely because the nation has contributed into your recovery. If we didn't pay for the CCTV system as a nation, if your were battling a case in court against a man who ran over a family member of yours and you needed the video evidence of him actually speeding you would not be able to get that footage - unless you paid £X amount of money. It's almost like going private in the NHS - you only pay money for when you actually need it but that often leads to massive amounts of money. In a documentary by Michael Moore called Sicko, a man who lost his fingers in a sawing accident had to pay something like $50,000+ to have ONE finger back on, because he didn't have Health Insurance (or America doesn't support the idea of Universal Health Care because, quite clearly in the documentary, they are scared of becoming a communist nation). That isn't the UK at all, are we not a nation that prides itself in nationalism, full of community spirit?  

   Then there are people who are so paranoid that they are being watched, they feel claustrophobic, trapped. I'm not like that at all, for me they are a piece of ubiquitous tech, there when needed. This is just my attitude, but, I've got nothing to hide. Until the government starts to go all Orson Wells on us - putting cameras in our homes, then they have my support.