*Britain risks becoming 'Orwellian society'*

 From correspondents in London

May 20, 2007 08:13pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse

AN increase in closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras risks turning
Britain into an Orwellian society, a senior police officer said in an
interview broadcast today.

The deputy chief constable of Hampshire Police, in south-east England,
Ian Readhead, said he did not want to live in a country like that in
author George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, with surveillance on every
street corner.

"I'm really concerned about what happens to the product of these cameras
and what comes next," he told BBC television, highlighting the fact that
a village in his area had installed CCTV, despite crime rates being low.

"If it's in our villages, are we really moving towards an Orwellian
situation with cameras on every street corner? I don't think it's the
kind of country I want to live in."

He also called for a review of speed cameras and limits to the retention
of DNA, which is taken from anyone arrested even if they are not
charged. Britain's DNA database is the largest in the world, with 3.6
million samples.

There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain – one for
every 14 people. Every person is caught on camera about 300 times each
day. A new system of "talking" CCTV was unveiled earlier this year.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas last year warned that Britain
was becoming a "surveillance society" where CCTV cameras, credit card
analysis and travel movements are used to track people's lives minute by
minute.

A study by human rights watchdog Privacy International last November
ranked Britain bottom of the democratic Western world and alongside
Russia for its record on protecting individual privacy.

Police and supporters of CCTV argue that the system plays a crucial role
in deterring crime and catching criminals and that the innocent have
nothing to fear.