Big Brother irks UK citizens

Most find government’s constant surveillance an invasion of their privacy

LONDON: Hidden in foliage next to a path in the southeast England seaside town of Hastings are digital cameras. Their target: litterbugs and dog walkers. The electronic eyes feed images to a monitoring unit, where they’re scanned and stored as evidence to prosecute people who discard garbage or fail to clean up after pets, a spokeswoman for the town council said.

“It’s becoming a bit Big Brother-like,’’ said Sandra Roberts, 50, a Hastings kiosk manager, invoking George Orwell’s 1949 book Nineteen Eighty-Four, about a Britain where authorities pry into all aspects of citizens’ lives.

Local authorities are adopting phone-record logging, e-mail taps and camera surveillance to police such offenses as welfare fraud, unlawful dumping of waste and sick-day fakery. Telecommunications companies are about to join the list of crime monitors. Already, 4.5 million closed-circuit cameras watch public places across Britain, or about 1 camera for every 15 people, the highest ratio in the world.

“There’s too much of it now, all this spying,’’ said Ivor Quittention, 80, a retired owner of three hardware stores who lives in Hastings. The town’s spokeswoman, who declined to be identified, said spying is the most effective way of dealing with something residents complain about most.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, dubbed ‘the snoopers charter’ by London-based civil-rights group Liberty, was passed by the ruling Labour Party in 2000 to legislate methods of surveillance and information gathering. The purpose of the law, known also as Ripa, was to help prevent crime, including terrorism, according to Home Office.

Initially, only security and intelligence services could invoke the Act’s provisions. In 2003, Parliament extended powers to the 474 local councils in England, Scotland and Wales, as well as to 318 other state bodies, including 11 Royal Parks, the Post Office and Chief Inspector of Schools.

The latest proposed expansion of the Act requires telecommunications providers to store the text of all e-mails and details of all phone calls transmitted over their lines. The government is seeking the views of the public on the proposal until Oct. 31. The bill will then go to Parliament for consideration.

Of the 163 UK councils that replied to calls and Freedom of Information requests from Bloomberg, 95 per cent said they use Ripa. Nine said they don’t, including Barnet, Basingstoke and Deane, Broadland, Halton, Harrogate, Shepway, West Devon, Slough and the Shetlands, a group of islands off Scotland where sheep outnumber people.

Three declined to provide details without payment of an administrative fee.

East Hampshire, in England, applied the law to catch vandals defacing tombstones. Derby, England, invoked it to send children with recording gear into shops to see if they’d unlawfully be sold cigarettes and alcohol. In Aug, Paul Griffiths was taken to court and fined £1,000 for allowing his dog to foul grass outside his home in Bristol. Griffiths said his pet had only been urinating when she was spotted on camera.