Police Scotland are again pushing to unify Scottish Closed-Circuit TeleVision (CCTV) cameras into a single, centrally-controlled national network of High Definition (HD) cameras.
Calling the present decentralised network of cameras that are controlled and run locally outdated and unreliable, Police Scotland want to take control of the cameras themselves. Eyeing a potential £10 million budget for the project, all video feeds would come in centrally from new high definition cameras. Justifying their desire and the price tag, Police Scotland warns the present system is ‘close to collapse’, reports The Guardian, with aged equipment prone to failure and ready to black out at any moment.
Ruling nationalist socialist party the SNP are supporting the move, which is being opposed in the Scottish parliament by the Liberal Democrats, whose Scottish leader warned “Decent, law-abiding people deserve assurances that someone is watching the watchmen”.
Britain is already the most watched nation on earth, with 20-per-cent of all CCTV cameras in the world observing just one-per-cent of the global population. Speaking to Breitbart London, Big Brother Watch pressure group chief Renate Samson warned the UK was at risk of sleepwalking into a surveillance state, as HD cameras could easily be turned over to other purposes. She said:
“Proposals to proceed with an unregulated centralised CCTV system pose huge questions about data protection and the impact on citizens right to lead a private life.
“Technology is moving apace, without clear and strict guidelines regarding the regulation and oversight of the system what is CCTV today could be an audio recognition or biometric system tomorrow.
“CCTV is consistently shown to be poor at assisting in solving crime. Before these proposals gain further traction, evidence must be presented to the public to show the full scale of benefits – if any – of CCTV in solving or indeed preventing crime in Scotland. Until then these proposals should be approached with caution. “
Follow Oliver Lane on Twitter: Follow @Oliver_Lane or e-mail to: olane@breitbart.com
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