In London, Big Brother's just part of the family
Emphasis is mine
In London, Big Brother's just part of the family
Quote:Sep 17, 2007 04:30 AM
Christopher Hume
LONDON- Big Brother or as Londoners call him, Big Bruvver is alive and well in this city.
From the moment they leave home to the moment they return, Londoners can pretty well assume they're on some closed-circuit television or other. The cameras are everywhere, carefully located to take in the entire city.
It doesn't take long for a visitor to realize that this is urban paranoia writ large. There may be good reason for this after all, London has experienced terrorist campaigns, IRA bombings and, before those, the Blitz but fear of attack has reached unprecedented proportions here.
Heathrow Airport has become a nightmare; travellers now face a second security search that requires putting their shoes through an X-ray machine. If it weren't so ridiculous, it might be funny.
Though residents seem indifferent to the loss of their privacy, to a visiting Torontonian, there's something decidedly Orwellian about 21st-century London. Somebody's always watching you.
The official response that only the guilty need worry about constant surveillance seems inadequate, even offensive. After all, anonymity ranks among the greatest gifts of urbanity. How extraordinary that it would be handed over with so little fuss.
In this sense, one can't help but feel lucky about living in Toronto, a city that doesn't have London's history of violence and, consequently, of paranoia. We can still wander the streets with relative safety and freedom. True, we're photographed something like a dozen times daily by video cameras, but that's mainly by retailers worried about shoplifters. We fall far short of the kind of government-sanctioned coverage Londoners know so intimately.
Ironically, the network of cameras that had already begun blanketing London was abetted by the creation of the Congestion Zone, in which cameras photograph licence plates to keep track of cars entering the designated area so they can be billed. The system now allows police to keep track of everything that happens in London's inner core.
And now, after the appearance of homegrown British terrorism, it seems arguments against the camera network have fallen silent.
Given the pace of London life, it's not surprising people have more immediate concerns than the threat to their privacy. Who's got the time for such niceties?
Toronto, a second-rung city, doesn't hold the same appeal for terrorists. We're not a world financial centre, a cultural hub or an urban icon. In other words, we offer limited strategic value.
And God knows, the prospect of a congestion zone similar to London's doesn't loom large in this city, as fully addicted to the automobile as any in North America.
For the time being, that means we remain relatively paranoia free. Until one visits a place like London, this can be easy to overlook.
Despite Toronto's civic dysfunctionality, its lack of vision and ambition, weak leadership and growing American-ness, it has not had to succumb to the creeping Big Brotherliness that characterizes London.
We don't walk down the street looking over our shoulders, wondering if we've done something wrong. Not yet.
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself," Franklin Roosevelt said famously. The truth of his words has never been more apparent. We inhabit an age of fear. It has been encouraged by governments and incorporated into the very fabric of our cities.
So far Toronto, to its credit, has managed to avoid London's fate; it's one of the city's best qualities, though most of us rarely think of it. By the time we do, it could well be too late.
A pretty fair article, IMO. Even outlines how one issue (congestion) is used to facilitate a program (cameras) when the real intention is to surveil the whole city. What matter tho' eh? Only the 'guilty' need worry.....
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