U.K. to Monitor Families With In-Home Surveillance
With millions of cameras watching its citizens' every move, Britain is already one of the world's leading surveillance states. Now the government wants to go even further, putting cameras in 20,000 private homes "to make sure children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals," reports the Telegraph. Update
Editor’s Note:
A number of readers have challenged the accuracy of this story (see their comments below). We link below to a Telegraph article, but most blogs reference the same story in the Daily Express, a conservative tabloid. Reader memebreak writes, “Apparently, in very extreme cases, ‘problem families’ may be given the option to move from their (often state funded) homes to ‘core residential units’ for 24 hour support and supervision, but we’re not talking about 20,000 famlies, and this is very different from the Express report of the government planning to put ‘20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV supervision in their own homes.’ “
With millions of cameras watching its citizens’ every move, Britain is already one of the world’s leading surveillance states. Now the government wants to go even further, putting cameras in 20,000 private homes “to make sure children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals,” reports the Telegraph.
The households chosen for this gross violation of privacy will only be the most “shameless,” of course. “Sin bins,” they’re calling them. We don’t want to defend abusive or negligent parents, but “intensive 24-hour supervision” of government-disapproved households is just plain creepy.
How fitting for the homeland of Jeremy Bentham and George Orwell.
Time to dust off “Discipline and Punish.”
WAIT, BEFORE YOU GO…Telegraph:
Under the Government scheme, members of “Shameless” families are given intensive 24-hour supervision to make sure children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.
Parents are also given help to stop them leading dysfunctional lives and to combat drug or alcohol addiction.
Around 2,000 families have gone through Family Intervention Projects, but ministers intend to increase its scope to 20,000 more in the next two years – each costing between £5,000 and £20,000.
If you're reading this, you probably already know that non-profit, independent journalism is under threat worldwide. Independent news sites are overshadowed by larger heavily funded mainstream media that inundate us with hype and noise that barely scratch the surface. We believe that our readers deserve to know the full story. Truthdig writers bravely dig beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that tells you what’s really happening and who’s rolling up their sleeves to do something about it.
Like you, we believe a well-informed public that doesn’t have blind faith in the status quo can help change the world. Your contribution of as little as $5 monthly or $35 annually will make you a groundbreaking member and lays the foundation of our work.
In the real-life version of the dystopian novel "1984" we seem to be caught in, Trump is our very own idiosyncratic version of Big Brother.
Some of the darkest secrets of the U.S. national security establishment are exposed in the upcoming book "In the Shadows of the American Century."
The best literary precedent for what we're enduring now is not the absolute order of Big Brother but the irrational eruptions of King Lear.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court found that the Wikimedia Foundation had standing to argue that the National Security Agency was violating its First and Fourth Amendment rights by spying on its users' communications.
A recent hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reviewed law enforcement use of facial recognition technology and got some troubling information.
I suspect we're about to have the screw-you presidency of all time, far surpassing George Orwell's vision. And believe me, that will prove to be dystopian beyond compare -- or do I mean beyond despair?
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.