hardcover
200 pages
ISBN: 1-59403-248-3
$21.95 List price
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A chance encounter with a talking lamppost got Ross Clark wondering if there is any escape from Britain’s growing surveillance apparatus. He set himself a challenge: could he travel to London’s famous Southend Pier without Big Brother knowing where he had gone? In this entertaining account of his attempt to shake Britain’s 4.2 million CCTV cameras and other forms of surveillance, Clark reveals the astonishing amount of personal data that is hoarded by the state and by commercial organizations, and asks whom should we fear most—the government agencies who are spying on us, or the criminals who seem to prosper in the swirling fog of excessive data collection.
Among Clark’s discoveries are:
- If he flies to New York, the FBI will keep a record of what he had for lunch.
- 2,700 people are wrongly recorded as criminals on Britain’s Police National Computer.
- The first year after CCTV cameras were installed in Baltimore in 2005, they helped police solve not one serious crime.
- Seventy Americans have been implanted with microchips to help identify them if they become lost and confused.
- British companies are routinely vetting potential employees by searching MySpace for evidence of drunken antics.
- An information company seemed to know that Clark has cherry trees in his garden.
According to Britain’s information commissioner, we are “sleepwalking into a surveillance society.” In fact, Britain may already have arrived there. But as surveillance measures gain traction in major American cities, Ross Clark’s invaluable book may be our final warning before Big Brother crosses the pond.
