"Cameras bring fear of crime" read the headline of Simon Freeman's article (August 24), which then showed people are afraid surveillance in one place will not prevent crime but simply move it to another non-monitored area.
In this way, surveillance has been allowed to justify itself and mushroom with scant opposition.
Britain was dubbed the surveillance capital of Europe long ago and now we lead the world.
More than one million video cameras, owned by public and private organisations, now watch and record us.
The average UK city-dweller is filmed some 300 to 400 times each day, mostly for no good reason whatsoever. How did such a situation develop?
It began with just a few cameras being installed as a sop to infantile paranoiacs, driven by a fear of crime that was totally out of proportion to the actual risk of their becoming victims.
Now we are close to a situation where surveillance will become the norm and people will claim they feel somehow "unsafe" anywhere without it.
Orwell's nightmare will have become real but under a system of market capitalism instead of Stalinism.
The Winston Smiths of this dehumanised future will be docile, obedient consumers with credit cards and on-line shopping accounts.
Their submission will be total and they will have learned to love the real Big Brother.
-P D Jackson, Byron Street, Hove
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