LISTENING TO THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

27-11-2006

The news that British police are considering using eavesdropping technology that will allow them tolisten to conversations in the street should come as no surprise in a Britain where official snooping has become a way of life. We are already the most watched nation on earth - but a long way from being the safest.

This is the conundrum of our sneak society. CCTV cameras trail us, not just in city centres, but in suburbs and even on housing estates. In Birmingham alone, The Stirrer has seen spy cameras in residential streets in inner-city Newtown and outer-city Druids Heath.

Do they make us feel any less likely to become victims of mugging or some other kind of attack? Not in my experience. A hoody can still pounce from the shadows confident that there's unlikely to be a copper in the vicinity and certain that he will never be identified by the fuzzy images that are the stock in trade of the closed circuit telly merchants.

That's not to say that the cameras don't have any role in combating crime; we've all seen footage of bank raiders and football hooligans who can be brought to book after event courtesy of a spying eye.

What CCTV can't do is reduce the impetus to rob or fight or rape, and unlike the possibility of being caught in the act by a uniformed officer there's not much evidence that they deter it either.

Would microphones make any difference? I doubt it. The Dutch police apparently use them in 300 sites across Hollandand now British cops are considering whether they would be appropriate for major cities here - most notably London ahead of the 2012 Olympics (www.timesonline.co.uk) - but other than lining the pockets of technology companies it's hard to see how they would work.

Terrorists and other serious villains don't chat openly on the street about what they are about to do, and while a few petty crims might well be caught up in the net, so too would dozens of innocent people whose joshing words could easily be misinterpreted by an over-zealous cop.

Might a passing use of the “N” word in a conversation be construed as a “hate crime”? Would the desire to “see Blair dead” be interpreted as treason? You would expect not; but then you never expected to live in a Britain where protesting within a mile of parliament without permission was a crime did you? Or where citizens can be locked up for 28 days for questioning before a charge is brought.

Once they start picking us up for what we say, for what we threaten to do, we are only a short step away from thought crime -whether in1984or Minority Report, this has a respectable tradition in fiction, but would now become fact.

The population would be terrified to speak out of turn in public - but like the countries behind the Iron Curtain would develop a series of a nods and winks and whispers to subvert the ever-watching eye of the State.

Ordinary coppers - still viewed by most people in Britain withrespect - would becomeseen less as allies in the war against crime, and more as agents of some remote regimethat can'teven allow its citizens the pleasure of aprivate conversation in a public place.