In an astonishing development, our political masters have come up with the ultimate absurdity in a vain attempt to control crime and turn this once proud nation into a nation of snouts, narcs and grasses. I checked the date. it is not All fool’s Day.
The Times reports…
Crimespotting: the new way to make money on the Internet
Britain, already one of the most snooped-upon nations on Earth, is about to become a nation of snoopers. A network of citizen crimewatchers will be given the chance of winning up to £1,000 by monitoring CCTV security cameras over the internet.
The cameras’ owners will pay a fee to have users watch the footage. The scheme, Internet Eyes, is being promoted as a game and is expected to go “live” next month with a test run in Stratford-upon-Avon. Subscribers will be able to register free and will be given up to four cameras to monitor. Eventually the consortium behind the idea hopes to have internet users around the world focused on Britain’s 4.2 million security cameras, waiting to see and report a crime in return for cash prizes.
This latest bit of half-baked fuckpiggery is just too absurd for serious comment – but…. I have a horrible feeling people will rush to hire the CCTV cameras and middle minded politicians with less sense than a drunken parrot with a bazooka will applaud the idea as ‘empowering for the people of Britain’ and make statements like…. ‘It is time we took back our streets’ blah blah blah.
I shall, of course, be applying to hire the CCTV cameras in Chancery Lane and Fleet Street so I can keep an eye on the activities of our learned friends….
*Think* for today
From the same Times article: “Britain is one of the world’s most monitored societies, with one camera per fourteen people. It has 20 per cent of the world’s CCTV cameras, but only one per cent of the global population.”
[...] alongside Mark Steyn, and blogged about the experience. And across the pond, Charon QC is troubled by recent technological innovations in the British criminal justice system, while Geeklawyer notes one of the most ridiculous examples [...]