"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
Thought Police - 1984, George Orwell

Category Archives: cctv

ANPR network records and watches your every move

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Posted by paul on May 24, 2009 – 9:36 pm
Filed under anpr, cctv, privacy
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ANPR camera van

A recent edition of  BBC program “Who’s Watching You” has revealed that UK police forces, with the knowledge of the UK government, is building a national grid network of ANPR cameras.

ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras automatically read the number plate of passing cars and check with DVLA databases whether the vehicle is correctly registered, taxed and insured.  Normally the cameras are used by police to stop offending drivers immediately.

However, the linkage of the police, council and other CCTV cameras into a nationwide network and central database means that authorities will now be able to track vehicles across cities and the whole country without anyone knowing.  The database will link together sitings of a particular vehicle into a timestamped journey around the country.  Since the system will automatically record all vehicles it will allow users of the database to retrospectively track any vehicle. Read More »

CCTV Cameras will soon be listening to you as well

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Posted by paul on May 6, 2009 – 10:12 pm
Filed under cctv, surveillance
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Spooky CCTV pictureThe BBC has reported that trials have recently occurred in Scotland of using street based CCTV cameras that monitor sounds as well.

The trials have been performed by a Dutch company called Sound Intelligence.  As you pass by, the CCTV camera analyses the tone of your voice rather than what you are actually saying.  Presumably if you sound stressed then you are likely to be a terrorist or mad, upon which the Big Brother police can swoop down and take you away for the good of society.

What’s next – listening in on your conversation on the street listening for significant words – like “bomb” or “airport” ????  Or maybe tapping into your phone calls or e-mails for stress or significant words.  Oh, I forgot, they are already planning to do that.

Maybe they decided to trial it in Scotland to see if it could cope with the strong Scottish accent!

Via BBC