A new fleet of MW Power microdrones await shipment to police departments, ready to surveil the citizenry
by Heather Brooke
Two weekends ago at the V Festival, revellers were surprised to see a remote-controlled surveillance drone flying and filming overhead. Little to nothing was known beforehand about the drone’s use, and news reports after the fact shed little light on why or how its use was approved.
I put in a Freedom of Information Act request and discovered that the drone was part of a sales demo by a company called MW Power at the invitation of Staffordshire Police. What about the legality of the drone, I asked the police? They wondered why I was asking. Was I a competitor? Did I want to sell them a drone? It was unbelievable to the police, I suppose, that a citizen might be concerned about her privacy.
MW Power told me that more than half of Britain’s police forces have asked for a drone demo and many are finalising packages to buy the £30,000 kit – this without any public discussion about whether it is a useful way of combating crime.
Overarching surveillance infringes our privacy. So, for such an infringement to be justified, the police ought to have evidence to show its effectiveness. Instead, the police grab at invasive technologies without regard to the cost in terms of individual privacy or community trust. The police claim that drones will prevent thefts, but they can’t provide any proof. Shouldn’t such proof exist before the police throw taxpayer’s money into the sky?
Cops with helmet cameras, the DNA database, automatic numberplate recognition, CCTV – all these technologies have been slyly introduced: imagined future benefits are played up while the very tangible, immediate costs of lost privacy are airily discounted.
The Crown Prosecution Service, for example, has no figures on the success of CCTV in prosecuting crime. As for prevention, violent crime has doubled in the ten years since CCTV came to blanket the country. And yet Simon Byrne, the Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside, still says: “People clamour for the feeling of safety which cameras give.”
I don’t. Far better to rely on real eyes in real human heads with real police officers backing them up.
But I’m told by Merseyside Police – the first force to buy a drone – that the flying spy has been “a great success and people feel they’ve reclaimed their parks”.
Has the drone’s footage been used as evidence to prosecute or arrest anyone? No. Not much of a success then.
If police forces were directly accountable to the people they serve, it’s doubtful that we would have agreed to such costly blanket surveillance – whether drones in the sky or cameras on every street corner – without the solid facts to persuade us of its necessity. But when the only person that the police have to please is the Home Secretary, then citizens’ rights are irrelevant.
4 responses so far ↓
Marcus // September 4, 2007 at 7:44 pm
It makes me wonder where this will all end. Well no, I guess it all ends once the gov. have total lockdown – or when people have simply had enough.
So aside from the loss of privacy – one thing rarely (if ever) asked is; what effect will this have on people conscious? How will it alter our awareness and perception of reality?
A so deemed ‘higher power’ watching over our every move. Willing and able to judge us whenever we commit what in certain eyes may be a sin. All in the hands of someone that essentially lives in a ‘different ideological world’ to the everyday citizen.
I think the effects on our conscious are very clear indeed. And you can increasingly see it play out in people attitudes.
It really is very sad…
Sovereign John // September 17, 2007 at 4:42 pm
The last attempt they failed to achieve their final solution for the world. This time technology will get it done for them. They now have CyberInterNetics to replace all human labor. They don’t need us anymore.
Sovereign John // September 17, 2007 at 4:43 pm
http://sovereignjohn.wordpress.com/why-the-future-doesnt-need-us/
pjwalker911 // September 17, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Or you can look at it another way:
We don’t need THEM anymore. Like children born to abusive parents, we are ready to fly the coop, get out of their system and create our own system of peace, prosperity and liberty.
I forget the quote, but Jefferson put it well that when the government becomes oppressive, it is every man’s right and duty (at least to himself) to overthrow it and start fresh.