Never let it be said that Nanny is not innovative, when it comes to thinking up new was of monitoring the day to day lives of her charges.
Aside from the many thousands of CCTV cameras in place throughout the country, Nanny is working on new ways to film our lives.
Step forward her chums in Ealing council, who have come up with a real corker of an idea. They are to put cameras into baked bean cans, and house bricks, in order to monitor what people throw away and when they throw it away.
Brilliant!
Nanny's chums in Ealing are concerned about "enviro-criminals", people who leave out black bags when they should not or let the contents spill on to the pavement.
Nanny's chums in Tory run Ealing, which had the dirtiest streets in London in 2004, said:
"To catch vandals and envirocriminals,
cameras disguised as anything from tin cans
to house bricks will email images
to the council's CCTV control centre."
That's all very well, but how do the people of Ealing know that the images collected may not be used for other forms of surveillance or just simply nosey spying by some bored operative?
The essential issue here, as with all forms of surveillance by Nanny, is that people simply do not trust the state not to misuse and abuse the surveillance equipment.
Hmm, this sounds like rather cool technology, man!
ReplyDeleteSo am I right thinking that if I want the same all I have to do is walk around the streets of Ealing looking for bean cans, bricks or similar with a lens poking out of them?
Cool.
Some years ago a company I worked for moved to a rural location and took over a single storey building. Security cameras were installed to cover the area around the buildings.
After a few months of occupancy most of the cameras were stolen one night. Replacements were fitted about 3 weeks later with extra security features. They were stolen the night before the final tidying was to be finished and the installation signed off.
The next attempt resorted to and even more secure form of housing for the cameras. So far as I know that worked at the time. However that was over 10 years ago and whether thee have been subsequent losses I don't know.
I can't see a Bean Can being very secure - unless it is constantly being watched by another bean can or an army of supervisors.
I'm sure the good citizens of Ealing could have some real fun with this. Finding an abandoned baked bean can they could be environmentally friendly and crush it ready to be placed in the appropriate collection box. Should there be an unexpected crunch as a piece of surveillance equipment is flattened as well then so be it. They were not to know it was an undercover surveillance can on a covert op.
ReplyDeleteAs for bricks, well we all know that bricks can be used to build walls so if one should 'accidentally' find itself cemented into a wall with the camera aperture facing another brick then "Oh dear!".
In fact a whole new game could be invented "Hunt the cam" in which local folks attempt to locate the hidden cameras and do interesting things with them. Fun for all the family and helping bring communities together.
But wouldn't leaving a can lying around make this branch of the enforcers liable for nanny's on the spot litter fines?
ReplyDeleteEaling, this would be the same council who's binmen ignored the bags of garden waste (we left too many out, so rather than take the required number they left the lot). When we complained a few weeks later they came and collected them, split half the contents across the street and threatened and verbally abused my wife.
ReplyDeleteThank f*ck we no longer live there.
ummmmmmmm it sounds like funny running around looking in of bin.kewl blog intresting stuff also there like to be in touch.
ReplyDeleteBiby Cletus
Kerala,
India
Nah...you're all just overeacting. The footage is no doubt intended to be the basis of a new series of Ealing comedies!
ReplyDeleteShortly appearing on a DVD near you!
Pete
You have bean warned!!!!
ReplyDeleteThey will be easy to spot by the massive warning signs anyway (or is nanny going to ignore the data protection act) http://www.cctv-information.co.uk/cgi-bin/index.cgi?url=http://www.cctv-information.co.uk/dataprot/
ReplyDelete