Smile! You’re on Candid Camera – 300 times daily
A look inside the secret world of the London CCTV (Close Circuit Television) control center in Saturday’s FT (subscription required).
Factoids:
To a unique extent, the British have abrogated civil rights in favor of the safety of constant surveillance by literally millions of CCTV cameras. Central London is blanketed. The small Cheshire market-town where my parents live hosts dozens.
FT reporter Sarah Duguid became the first journalist allowed inside the central London control room, where a team of three young techie security staff put in 12 hour shifts monitoring 110 TV screens, using joysticks to zoom and pan with abandon. Over a billion images per shift are stored on file.
The British seem to be in two minds about the benefits of this Truman Show experience. Monitoring crimes large and small (from the July 7 bombings to drunken louts groping women or squaring off as the pubs empty) keeps the street safer. But the cameras can see everyone outdoors, day and night. There’s some reassurance that the system is programmed with ‘privacy zones’
As the camera passes by windows of private homes, a section of the screen pixilates to obscure the area
thus preventing the operators from indulging any prurient interests. However, on the street, any street, there’s little they don’t see. The ‘weirdest incident’ one recalls was watching “a male and a female making love in a wheelchair in the middle of the road”.
While the cameras are not wired for sound, I would be amazed if they don’t use lip-readers to decode some conversations, and they openly admit to being able to read text messages on cell phones.
So next time you visit Britain, remember to smile, you’re on candid camera.
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