The Joy of Surveillance

Perhaps for Morpeth's local polity the fictional village of Sandford, setting for the film 'Hot Fuzz', isn't a wretched dystopia but an exemplary community to be emulated. How else to explain this front page headline story, remarkable even by the standards of the Herald?

You can't not take a swing at drek like this, so:

Sir,

you report "Delight at new CCTV system for town". Only "delight"? Nowhere a spasm of disquiet or curiosity about this beefing up of surveillance in the places where we live and work?

Oughtn't surveillance in public space to be conditional on the consent of the community being subjected to it, a community first persuaded of its necessity and proportionality? Were Alison Byard and David Bawn elected to their respective positions on manifesto pledges to extend surveillance: have they a mandate? Perhaps they could clarify? 

£2,500 from the Chamber of Commerce: what was the total cost? Were there any other private contributors or was all the balance public money?

In whose office do the monitors sit: who is it that has us under surveillance? Does the harvester and processor of all this personal data have GDPR compliant structures, procedures and safeguards in place? Who should we approach with our 'subject access requests'?

And is there no flinching, anywhere, at the glib, unexamined conflation of "the common good" with the business interests of the Chamber of Trade? Might there be metrics of "the common good" in a community other than the solvency of its commercial landlords?

Faithfully