If you (a) drive and (b) live in the North East, then you're being watched

Over at Journal Live, a story that should be read as a warning sign of the state of things to come - ad hoc secret surveillance of drivers in the North East, to enable fines for motor law infractions.

As I said yesterday whilst representing Big Brother Watch on BBC Radio Newcastle, this is a terrible development.  I don't drive myself, but I am acutely aware of the war on motorists being waged by the bureaucracy in this country, squeezing and squeezing drivers for all they're worth, with ever-more taxes and fines, of which this is merely the latest example.

But it comes with a new set of privacy concerns, and it is peculiarly ill-thought-out.

On the privacy front, Big Brother Watch's position is this.  Technology has a role to play in law enforcement.  For serious offences, such as terrorism, violent offending, drug running and the like, then targeted surveillance can obviously be justified.  But for parking offences, blanket surveillance or roving surveillance that treats all of us as potential criminals simply cannot be right.  It represents a terrible inversion of the proper relationship between the state and the individual.  The "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" brigade ought to contemplate the fact that in the age of surveillance we really ought to decide what sort of society we want to live in.  If this is the only way to solve these minor offences, then perhaps it would be better that they go unsolved rather than empower the state to constantly watch us like this.  

On the policy front, a simple point.  There's no evidence, as far as I know, to suggest that roving CCTV will be any more effective than current provisions.  Whilst it's not covered in the Journal Live piece, the point made by the supporters of this policy as put on BBC Radio Newcastle yesterday was that child safety outside schools is apparently at stake.  The invocation of the modern magic mantra - "it's for the children" - is the way so much of our authoritarian apparatus has been smuggled in. I'd ask - really?  Are children really endangered by people parking in the wrong place?  And if they are, then what evidence is there that this spyathon is better at protecting them than eye witness evidence, other parents, teachers, policemen, etcetera?

But that won't matter to those who've decided to institute this policy because I suspect that efficacy isn't their aim - revenue raising is.

Perhaps they'd deny that the hope of a walloping return is the reason for this significant expenditure on surveillance toys.  If so, then in this time of economic strife, I suppose it's heartening to see that bureaucrats in the North East have this kind of cash to fling around.  And if such money really is available, is this the best way to spend it?  Is it better than, say, having more policemen?  Those officers would be able, not only to spot such vital things as irregular parking, but also a plethora of other offences too, and offer a reassuring presence on the beat, too.

The people of the North East weren't offered any say on this before the policy was introduced.  If they'd been given a chance to choose a few more policemen instead, what might have been the answer..?

By Alex Deane