Something that's struck me in my recent intensive encounter with the British public transport system is the way public attitudes to surveillance systems have changed in the last twenty years.
As recently as 1978, surveillance cameras in public areas were seen as a symbol of an oppressive government. There's ample evidence for that in The Way Back, and in the title sequence for the first two series. And then there's the way the same cameras that are seen keeping an eye on the general public in TWB are used to control prisoners both in the detention area on earth, and on the London.
2001, and everywhere I go on the rail network and the London Underground, there are security cameras "for the protection of our customers and staff". Large notices drew my attention to the presence of these cameras, and the management's willingness to use them to protect those using and running the trains.
Watching the BBC documentary series on The Face, and there's a demonstration of the wonders of modern technology - the software system that can take an image from a security camera, and match it up against a database of faces, returning any match within a couple of seconds. Did I hear correctly when John Cleese mentioned "millions" in connection with how many faces are stored in this database? This software and database are up and running - it's what Neil and I were having a rant about last year. It's being used by the police right now. The documentary had nothing to say about the ethics of such a system.
Just how does a face get into this database? And why?
It's given me an insight into one of the aspects of TWB that I personally find deeply disturbing - that the population seem to accept what's going on. Doesn't seem to have taken much for *us* to accept similar uses of surveillance technology. It's wonderful for crime- fighting, and if you don't like it, what is it you want to hide? After all, only criminals would be worried about such a system.
Well, yes. Only criminals would be worried, I'll grant you that. It's the definition of "criminal" that worries me. Are you quite certain that you'll never be defined as a criminal? Or that you aren't already? An awful lot of people who consider themselves to be upright honest citizens get most indignant about the police "wasting their time on speeding offences when they could be catching criminals". It's an offence, sometimes an extremely serious offence, to speed on the roads, but somehow that isn't a crime because it's nice middle class people doing it.
Or to take an example a little closer to home for me - once, and only once, thank god, have I experienced what it's like to be classed as a criminal because of my race, by someone in a position to make my life unpleasant. UK passports list place of birth. I was travelling from England to Amsterdam a few years ago, at a time when the IRA was using the Netherlands as a base for terrorist attacks on British targets in Europe. The customs officer who examined my passport questioned me in an extremely unpleasant and threatening manner about the fact that I had an English accent when my place of birth was listed as Belfast. I've been asked about it by other customs officers, but politely and apparently out of curiosity, and this man's attitude was a frightening contrast.
And now people are finding themselves considered legitimate targets by vigilante groups, because they have the same name as someone convicted of paedophile offences, or because they live at an address that was once used by someone convicted by paedophile offences, or just because a nice juicy bit of gossip has been doing the rounds of the estate. All at the instigation of a tabloid paper that has cottoned on to a wonderful way to boost sales. I wonder how many tabloid readers have stopped to consider that *they* might be reclassified as criminals in the next wave of hysteria against some outcast group.
Somehow, I no longer find it implausible that Blake's lawyer was that naive about what was going on in his society.