CCTV debate in the news

From the CCTV User Group's CCTV Image Magazine:

"IT SEEMS AS IF CCTV is hardly ever out of the headlines. Stories range from the positive (eg. “Man convicted on CCTV evidence”) and the hopeful (eg. “Police release CCTV images of suspect”) to the doubtful (eg. “Why weren’t CCTV cameras working?”) and the negative (eg. “Thousands of CCTV cameras cost millions”). Meanwhile, the story that arguably kickstarted the CCTV revolu- tion in the UK is back in the news, as Jon Venables – who along with Robert Thompson abducted, tortured and murdered Jamie Bulger in February 1993 – has been recalled to prison for an unspecified violation of his licence of release.The grainy CCTV images of the toddler Jamie being led away by two children (aged 10) is widely credited with the surge in public support for CCTV. And now CCTV appears to have become a political football, with the Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling out the Conservative Party leader David Cameron for his lack of public support for CCTV.

According to an article on Bloomberg, at a major speech on law and order in Reading recently, the Prime Minister challenged the Conservative Party’s view that British society is “broken” and sought to use its opposition to closed-circuit television cameras and a DNA database as evidence that the party is made up of privileged people out of touch with the majority of the population.

“I know some people think CCTV is excessive but they don’t have to take the night bus home,” Brown said in his speech in Reading, west of London. “I know the hard-working majority will never be able to live in a gated community or hire a private security firm.” It is, according to Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, part of a wider attempt to repaint Labour as the “hanging and flogging party, whereas the Tories are a bunch of bleeding-heart, Guardian-reading milquetoasts”.

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Enjoy.