One hears a lot of complaints from people about how much we find ourselves on surveillance CCTV cameras these days. I'm not sure whether this surveillance is a bad thing or not. "They" can keep track of us.
However, I am much heartened by the other side of the equation. The recent front-page footage of a policeman apparently making an unprovoked baton assault on a bystander illustrates how "they" can no longer count on getting away with what they would have in the past. They went through their usual manoeuvre of writing a press release saying that they'd been trying to save the man, and had been obstructed by protesters throwing things ... and then the actual footage comes out. Ouch!
And we can all see it on Youtube. Yes, Youtube is another part of the freedom equation. In the past, if you'd recorded that on your video camera, you might have had a hard time finding the right person at the BBC to look at it, or persuading a newspaper to listen to you -- you might not have bothered. Now, you can put it on Youtube, it's in the public domain. People tell each other. The media have little choice but to cover it, trailing along behind public information and public opinion, rather than deciding what we should see and what we should think.
Nearly everybody these days carries a mobile phone, and a significant and increasing proportion of these are cameras, and even video cameras. I used to think it would be a good idea to keep a disposable camera permanently in the glove box of my car, in case of a collision, but that hardly seems necessary now. I have a small, discreet video camera on me all the time, in my phone. We can increasingly keep tabs on "them" too...
The combination of mobile phones and the internet is a very potent one, and a big threat to both the conventional media and the bent copper.
