'Big Brother' Britain 2006...
George Orwell was extremely prescient when he wrote 1984 in 1948. Although his dystopian novel was seen as an attack on 'Socialism', in fact it was an attack on the perverse Totalitarian version of 'Socialism' that had taken over after the revolution of 1917, or more importantly, after Lenin had died in January 1924. On his death bed, Lenin had warned against Stalin, suggesting that he should be removed from his post of General Secretary because he was becoming too powerful. What happened next was a battle waged by Stalin and the bureaucratic apparatus he had seized control of, against the old Bolsheviks, vintage-1917, such as Leon Trotsky. After the defeat of the Left Opposition and the exile of Trotsky (1928), Russia became a monolithic State, ruled by a dictator (Stalin), and with the GPU (later the NKVD and KGB), hounded the critics which eventually culminated in the Moscow Trials and the Great Purge of all the remaining old Bolsheviks, Trotskyists and other so called 'opponents' of the direction the regime was headed, during 1936/39.
As Animal Farm states, 'four legs good, two legs bad'; this eventually becomes 'four legs good, two legs better! Orwell wrote this animal fable as an allegorical portrayel of what he believed had happened to the Russian Revolution of 1917, whilst still retaining hope in the revolutionary process and seeing the workers as the only real agent for social change.
What on earth has all this got to do with my blog? Well, Orwells '1984' was not an attack on 'Socialism', rather an attack on Totalitarianism, dictatorship and a too powerful invasive State, which includes what could become of Western Democracy. Today, we are closer to Orwells vision than we were back in the 1940s, or even the year 1984 itself. In the Independent today(and all over the news), there was an article about how invasive our society has become over the last nine years, with surveillance techniques that the 'Big Brother' of 1984 would have wet dreams over. Like my earlier post about the slow chipping away of our Civil Liberties under 'New' Labour, this points towards what kind of society we are heading towards, and it ain't a pretty one; in fact, its pure hell.
The major surveillance techniques include:
* Video cameras monitoring buildings, shopping streets and residential areas. Automatic systems can now recognise vehicle number plates and faces.
* Software that analyses spending habits and the data sold to businesses. When we call service centres or apply for loans, insurance or mortgages, how quickly we are served and what we are offered can depend on what we spend, where we live and who we are.
* Electronic tags to monitor offenders on probation.
* DNA taken from those arrested by the police and placed on a database.
* Information stored about foreign travel.
* Smart cards in schools to determine where children are, what they eat or the books they borrow.
* Taps on telephones, e-mails and internet use that can screened for key words and phrases by British and US intelligence services.
Some more facts:
* The national DNA database holds profiles on about 3.5 million people.
* There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain: one for every 14 people.
* More than half of the UK population posseses a loyalty card issued by the firm that operates the Nectar scheme.
* Since 2002 there have been more than 8 million criminal records checks for jobs, of which around 400,000 contained convictions or police intelligence information.
* There are plans to expand capacity to read vehicle number plates from 35 million reads per day to 50 million by 2008.
* Some 216 catalogue companies in the UK are signed up to the Abacus data-sharing consortium, with information on 26 million individuals.
* The database of fingerprints contains nearly 6 million sets of prints.
* An individual can be captured on more than 300 cameras each day.
* By the end of 2002 law enforcement bodies had made more than 400,000 requests for data from mobile network operators.
* The number of motorists caught by speed cameras rose from 300,000 in 1996 to over 2 million in 2004.
* In the year to April 2005 some 631 adults and 5,751 juveniles were electronically tagged.
Now, it seems as if our ruling class have digested 1984 and 'seen the benefits'. People, something needs to be done to stop this madness in its tracks, before Orwells vision really does become a reality.
As Animal Farm states, 'four legs good, two legs bad'; this eventually becomes 'four legs good, two legs better! Orwell wrote this animal fable as an allegorical portrayel of what he believed had happened to the Russian Revolution of 1917, whilst still retaining hope in the revolutionary process and seeing the workers as the only real agent for social change.
What on earth has all this got to do with my blog? Well, Orwells '1984' was not an attack on 'Socialism', rather an attack on Totalitarianism, dictatorship and a too powerful invasive State, which includes what could become of Western Democracy. Today, we are closer to Orwells vision than we were back in the 1940s, or even the year 1984 itself. In the Independent today(and all over the news), there was an article about how invasive our society has become over the last nine years, with surveillance techniques that the 'Big Brother' of 1984 would have wet dreams over. Like my earlier post about the slow chipping away of our Civil Liberties under 'New' Labour, this points towards what kind of society we are heading towards, and it ain't a pretty one; in fact, its pure hell.
The major surveillance techniques include:
* Video cameras monitoring buildings, shopping streets and residential areas. Automatic systems can now recognise vehicle number plates and faces.
* Software that analyses spending habits and the data sold to businesses. When we call service centres or apply for loans, insurance or mortgages, how quickly we are served and what we are offered can depend on what we spend, where we live and who we are.
* Electronic tags to monitor offenders on probation.
* DNA taken from those arrested by the police and placed on a database.
* Information stored about foreign travel.
* Smart cards in schools to determine where children are, what they eat or the books they borrow.
* Taps on telephones, e-mails and internet use that can screened for key words and phrases by British and US intelligence services.
Some more facts:
* The national DNA database holds profiles on about 3.5 million people.
* There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain: one for every 14 people.
* More than half of the UK population posseses a loyalty card issued by the firm that operates the Nectar scheme.
* Since 2002 there have been more than 8 million criminal records checks for jobs, of which around 400,000 contained convictions or police intelligence information.
* There are plans to expand capacity to read vehicle number plates from 35 million reads per day to 50 million by 2008.
* Some 216 catalogue companies in the UK are signed up to the Abacus data-sharing consortium, with information on 26 million individuals.
* The database of fingerprints contains nearly 6 million sets of prints.
* An individual can be captured on more than 300 cameras each day.
* By the end of 2002 law enforcement bodies had made more than 400,000 requests for data from mobile network operators.
* The number of motorists caught by speed cameras rose from 300,000 in 1996 to over 2 million in 2004.
* In the year to April 2005 some 631 adults and 5,751 juveniles were electronically tagged.
Now, it seems as if our ruling class have digested 1984 and 'seen the benefits'. People, something needs to be done to stop this madness in its tracks, before Orwells vision really does become a reality.
posted by Kevin Sparrow at 2:55 pm
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