London's Police Experimenting with Head-Mounted Surveillance Cameras

Innovative, but a full scale violation of privacy -- what privacy with walking CCTVs nowadays?!

"The world draws ever-closer to the dystopia imagined in Hollywood blockbusters -- police in London are to be equipped with head-mounted cameras which will record everything in the direction the officer is looking. The tiny cameras are about the size of an AA battery and can record images of an extremely high quality.

Claimed to be a deterrent for anti-social behaviour, the first run of head-cams are being tested by eight Metropolitan beat officers this month. If successful, all police officers will eventually be equipped with a head camera.

These new 'robocops' add to the growing number of surveillance machines that peer at the public. Cynics argue that the logical progression of the police head-cam will be head-cameras that all citizens are required to wear. The video data would be relayed back to a central database where transgressions are recorded by a computer."

George Orwell is definitely turning upside down in his grave in the time of writing, and it's entirely up to you to come up with the possible scenarios for abusing this innovation -- The Final Cut too, has a good perspective.

Think that's not enough to raise your eyebrows? British Telecom is also about to "put thousands of spy camera recorders in its phone boxes and beam suspects mugshots to police. Cameras stationed on top of lampposts near the kiosks will send images to hidden digital video recorders inside the booths. Suspects photos will then be messaged almost instantly to hand-held digital assistants used by police and emergency services."

Issues to keep in mind:
- No more tax payers' money wasted on CCTVs to only cover the blind spots introduced by the old ones, now you have the "walking CCTVs" taking care
- Face and voice recognition, as well as parabolic type of remote listening capabilities will be the next milestones to reach
- Data collected would prove invaluable to ongoing investigations, and you know, "computers never lie" so digitally introducing minor motives here and there becomes a handy weakness
- More entertaining reality shows will follow for the purpose of communicating the value of the cameras to the general public
- Someone will sooner or later find a way to jam the stream

There's a saying about not looking anyone straight into the eyes on the mean streets of New York, guess the same applies to not looking straight into the eyes of London's police anymore. Every country needs an EFF of its own, especially the U.K these days. To illustrate what I have in mind, EPIC's listing the U.K at the top of the leading EU surveillance societies, and you may also find the U.K's opinion on its state of total surveillance, informative as well.

Finger-mounted keyboard chick courtesy of Kittytech.