The rise of the surveillance society

I was flicking channels yesterday and happened across an old episode of "Jeremy Clarkson's Motorworld". From the look of his clothing I would say it was filmed in the late 1980's however the programme was in fact made in 1995; well you don't watch Jezza for fashion tips.

The programme was set in Monte Carlo and included a scene where Jezza described the city as being three miles long by 300 yards wide and had a huge number of video cameras that kept it safe; all 160 of them. He then demonstrated how safe the city was by leaving a F500 note on the dashboard of his open top TVR when he went off to lunch. Under the gaze of one of the security cameras the car and it's large value note stayed untouched. I remember when I watched this programme back in the 1990's I thought that maybe if we had security cameras in London we would also have much less crime.

I mused about this last night as I drove into London, past more than 160 cameras of various types. I didn't feel especially safe as the main thing the cameras were concentrating on was not preventing violent crime but checking for anyone exceeding the speed limit by more than 1 mph.