K. SOWERBUTTS (Your Letters, July 23) supports the widespread, unregulated use of CCTV cameras to help prevent crime.
He notes that "crime is now a common occurrence" which does not suggest to me that installing CCTV has helped much! I have heard little evidence that CCTV reduces crime; it merely moves it to another location.
To say "If we have done nothing wrong, we have nothing to fear" is very short sighted or naive . . . but it is also the most commonly used defence for surveillance, wire tapping, cryptography legislation, and other insidious erosions to our right to privacy.
Who is to decide what is wrong? What if they decide that something you believe to be perfectly alright, and always has been, suddenly becomes wrong?
When George Orwell wrote his book 1984, to which K. Sowerbutts makes reference, he was even more worried about this passive acceptance of surveillance than he was about the surveillance itself.
We are much closer to the world Orwell foresaw than it is comfortable to admit.
B. VERYAFRAID
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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