Great Britain is on the brink of becoming the Big Brother state: having already set a world record for CCTV cameras per head, the government is now going to install cameras that talk to us. Worst of all: the scheme is using children.

Great Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country. In fact, it has more than most other countries put together. Soon, CCTV cameras will bark orders at people who misbehave in the streets of eight major British cities as part of a government scheme to cajole people into respecting authority. Heil to Big Brother!
People will be told off when they are being "anti-social" by dropping litter, behaving drunkenly, fighting, etc.

Cameras will be fitted with loud-speakers and CCTV operators taking part in the scheme will use recordings of children's voices. Children will be recruited from schools to take part in the £0.5m scheme and shown round CCTV operating rooms on school trips. Louise Casey, the government's "co-ordinator for respect", said: "We are encouraging children to send this clear message to grown ups - act anti-socially and face the shame of being publicly embarrassed."
Graeme Gerrard, chair of the CCTV Working Group of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said a Middlesborough trial of the scheme had been used for "dispersing intimidating groups loitering in shopping areas, parks and housing estates". A Home Office statement on the matter said the government would use the "power of pestering" to teach people what was unacceptable behaviour. Home Secretary John Reid said it was aimed at "the small minority who think it is acceptable to litter our streets, vandalise our communities and damage our properties." The question is whether the scheme will not mushroom from being directed to a small minority to the entire nation, as is so often the case.

Britain has some 4.2 million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 citizens. In 2002, it was reported that the average citizen in the UK is caught on CCTV cameras 300 times a day. Even then, analysis suggested that CCTV's overall impact was less than impressive. How the voice of a small child coming from a loudspeaker is going to scare of petty criminals, is a question few seem to have posed. The anti-theft gates installed in many shops at first caused serious social embarrassment, but today are better known for going off by mistake or error, rather than catching or embarrassing criminal behaviour.

The government's privacy watchdog Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, warned last year that the nation risks "sleepwalking into a surveillance society". Human rights group Privacy International says Britain is the worst country in the European Union at protecting individuals' privacy, citing "endemic surveillance". In fact, many town councils are actively supporting the installation of CCTV systems, as they believe it will heighten security in town centres. Some councils even plan to install such systems privately (using private funding) and several private citizens have cameras pointing at more than what is strictly and legally allowed. No-one seems to take any notice of such trespassers, if only because it might open a can of worms in which it will be learned that no-one is playing by the letter of the law.

Cameras are but the most visible aspect of covert or overt surveillance in the UK. Surveillance ranges from US security agencies monitoring telecommunications traffic passing through Britain, to key stroke information used to gauge work rates and GPS information tracking company vehicles. It predicts that by 2016 shoppers could be scanned as they enter stores, schools could bring in cards allowing parents to monitor what their children eat, and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk. At the same time, the UK has looser laws on privacy and data protection than most country. Dr David Murakami-Wood stated that "We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us." In short: a Big Brother state.

Home Secretary John Reid stated that schools in many areas were holding competitions for children to become the "voice" of CCTV cameras. And hence, within the Big Brother state, the notion that children are asked to spy on their parents and become the informers of the Thought Police, seems truly just around the corner... that's the corner on top of which sits a CCTV camera.