I loved the article by Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic about how individuals can fight the panoptic power of CCTV and other surveillance devices just by slathering on some face paint. According to Meyer, “the pixel-calculating machinations of facial recognition algorithms” are thwarted by connivingly applied make up, which transforms one’s f“ace into a mess …
The streets and parts and sidewalks of London are home to some 800,000 closed circuit TV cameras, a huge number of which are mounted on walls of public buildings. The cameras capture the comings and goings of vast numbers of people, scarcely any of whom feel that the cameras constitute an intrusion on their privacy. …
Friends of this blog know of my interest in the widespread use of CCTV in the UK. This past week, CCTV was very much in the news when a running camera captured a woman in Coventry named Mary Bale strolling down an ordinary suburban street and picking up an ordinary tabby cat, which she proceeded …
Having indulged for the last couple of years an almost perverse interest in the health of liberty in Great Britain, I am happy to report that with the ascension of the new coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, democracy seems back on track in the green and pleasant land. This from a …
Squired by London’s Mayor Boris Johnson, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg made a ballyhooed visit to the main control room of the London Underground last week, and came away favorably impressed with the ability of the Tube’s management to use its CCTV system to monitor events on any and every station and platform in the system. …
Does anyone else see the irony in the head of the world’s largest surveillance state meeting his destruction in front of an open mic? Let’s face it, for all the commentary about how Gordon Brown’s harsh comments about a 65 year-old housewife revealed the inner man, what he was mostly guilty of was venting. Struggling …
I am flattered that Boston blogger Brian Kane took a close interest in my Washington Monthly article on surveillance in the UK. He wasn’t entirely pleased–“I think Malanowski too readily dismisses the potential for significant abuse with the argument that there’s no centralization of all these surveillance systems at the moment,” he writes, and who …
My long-developing article on CCTV in the UK and the growing surveillance state there has at long last been published by The Washington Monthly. One of the great pleasures of visiting London in January was meeting so many interesting people and hearing so many thoughtful ideas about my subject, and one of the pains of …
There are more than 800,000 CCTV cameras in London, about 4.5 million in the UK, more per capita than any other place on earth. In Central London, they are everywhere.
Two final meetings today. I had breakfast with Mark Law (above, clear), a veteran journalist who runs thefirstpost.com, one of the very best websites on either side of the Atlantic. It was fun to trade tales with such an accomplished and experienced editor. Afterwards I journeyed to the South Bank to the headquarters of No2ID, …