For the London Free Press – March 9, 2009

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George Orwell’s depiction of state surveillance in 1984 is beginning to look less like science fiction and more like reality in the United Kingdom, where successive governments have created one of the most extensive and advanced surveillance systems in the world.

The British House of Lords just released a report that expresses concern over the U.K.’s extensive closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance network and its growing national DNA database, which contains information even about innocent people.

Its estimated that the U.K. has about 4 million public CCTV cameras. And Britain’s national DNA database contains information on 7% of the population, compared to only 0.5% in the United States.

Many government organizations claim the widespread surveillance and data collection enjoys public support by providing a greater sense of security.

But many others share a concern expressed by John Burrow, former chief constable of Essex, who believes that when the public fully recognizes the capabilities and intrusions of CCTV, it “may well be that there will be a falling off of public confidence in the authorities having control of such system.”

The eye-opening House of Lords report, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, questions the effectiveness of the surveillance and data gathering and stresses the importance of individual privacy.

It examines how surveillance and the collection of personal data are altering the relationship between people and the state and between individuals. It further canvasses whether the right to privacy is too easily overridden by the government’s assertion that these anti-crime measures are necessary.

This is similar to the statement contained in the 2007-08 Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s annual report on the Privacy Act: “The Orwellian dystopia was predicated on a totalitarian society. In our democracy, benevolent intentions appear to be pushing us toward a surveillance society.”

While the report does not go so far as to say that the U.K. has become an Orwellian state, it does say that “the expansion in the use of surveillance represents one of the most significant changes in the life of the nation since the end of the Second World War.”

The House of the Lords covers the claimed advantages of having this information, including the deterrence of crime, assistance to law enforcement, increased public safety, and the efficient provision of public services. Many, however, question how effective surveillance actually is in achieving those goals.

But the report also says that many of Britain’s “surveillance practices are unknown to most people and their potential consequences are not fully appreciated.”

Disadvantages, some of which are more difficult to quantify than the advantages, include the threat to privacy and social relationships, increased mistrust of the State, the risk to personal security and of identity fraud, as well as the selective way in which the technologies might be used to discriminate against certain categories of individuals. It isn’t always about what people are trying to hide, but rather what they are trying to protect.

To safeguard individual privacy from misuse of CCTV surveillance and the National DNA database, the report urges transparency and control over how and by whom the technologies are used.

The debate between state supervision and personal privacy rights will continue.

While it does, be careful — Big Brother just might be watching you, especially if you’re in the U.K.