DPP warns of dangers of unchecked surveillance state
- 23/10/2008
Sir Ken Macdonald QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions has spoken out about the growing surveillance state during a CPS lecture. The lecture entitled 'Coming out of the Shadows' was Macdonald's last before stepping down as head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
In his speech Macdonald pointed out the dangers inherent in state powers blindly following technological solutions:
Over the last thirty years technology has given each of us, as individual citizens, enormous gifts of access to information and knowledge. Sometimes it seems as if everything in the world is at our fingertips and this doubtless has made our lives immeasurably richer.
But technology also gives the State enormous powers of access to knowledge and information about each one of us. And the ability to collect and store it at will. Every second of every day, in everything we do.
He went on to warn of the consequences of letting the surveillance state expand unchecked:
[...] we need to understand that it is in the nature of State power that decisions taken in the next few months and years about how the State may use these powers, and to what extent, are likely to be irreversible. They will be with us forever. And they in turn will be built upon. So we should take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can't bear.
We at No CCTV have consistently stressed that better community reduces crime, technology does not.
Posted in cctv general - 23/10/2008
email: 
