An Olympic-Size Foucauldian Nightmare In The Land of Hope And Glory
By Colin Todhunter
05 July, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Britain is about to welcome thousands to its shores for the London Olympics. The world’s eyes will be focused on the nation, and politicians and business leaders will be keen to showcase Britain as a land of historical significance and leading-edge enterprise.
But behind the land of hope and glory media spin, the Buckingham Palace tourist-sight pomp and the corporate ad-fest of the Games will lurk another Britain. It is a Britain reeling from enforced austerity measures. It is a Britain of economic crisis fuelled by years of falling wages in relation to capital, reduced demand for goods and services and unsustainable levels of debt that led to the theft of billions of pounds of hard-pressed taxpayers’ money by the banking sector. Public sector cutbacks resulting in huge job losses and reductions in services, increased VAT and a range of other policies mean that ordinary people are now paying the price.
The government and media have been encouraging people to lay blame for current economic ills at the door of 'irresponsible' strike happy unions, benefit 'scroungers', the 'undeserving' poor and inefficient public services that are dragging the economy down. If David Cameron’s Conservative-led government ever needed an excuse to drive through an ideological-driven assault on the public sector, then the economic meltdown provided it. In true 'shock-doctrine' style, unpopular reforms are being pushed through on the back of a crisis.
Both government and media are fuelling a well worn divide and rule tactic that neatly tries to divert the public’s attention away from the fact that it is the system itself, capitalism, which has failed the people. If this strategy fails, though, a back-up plan involving wide scale policing and surveillance is already in place.
There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain, more than any other country in Europe. Modern technology allows the authorities to track down individuals and engage in the 'political policing' of lawful democratic activity on a scale not seen before. CCTV photography has already been used to identify individuals within crowds of demonstrators, and the UK has a permanent police unit looking for 'extremists' – whether lawful protesters or not.
Writer Nathan Allonby notes that Britain's huge CCTV network can now be used to allow data-mining and profiling, which could be applied to any number of databases. Facebook has added facial recognition to its features, and intelligence agencies have put vast resources into searching social network sites and internet forums. Systems are being developed for profiling internet dissent too.
It is now possible to identify an individual's movement via vehicle registration or public transport travel passes. An automatic number plate recognition facility is being added to CCTV systems so that any vehicle can be identified, and cameras are being integrated with travel cards so that travellers' identities can be established. Police can and do already obtain thousands of individuals' travel records each year from London’s OysterCard travel smartcard.
Many European countries are already putting radio-frequency identification chips (RIFC) in bank cards, which have in effect become de facto ID cards. The EU wants to give every chipped object its own webpage, and, each time an RFID tag is scanned, the webpage will be updated according to time and location.
The end result of these measures is that security agencies will have access to personal data on bank details, mobile phone locations, travel, internet usage and digital images that can be data-mined and applied to different scenarios, including taking part in a protest. From cradle to grave, officialdom will be watching, listening, tracking and prying.
Information derived from credit cards, internet cookies, vehicle registration plate recognition cameras, mobile phone and loyalty card data and CCTV is now being used to monitor and evaluate the citizen throughout every facet of his or her life. And be certain of one thing: the authorities will not allow dissent in any form to disrupt the shiny bright Olympics.
Human rights organisation Privacy International suggests Britain is the worst western democracy at protecting individual privacy. And there is a reason why this is the case. The British government regards its population as a threat to the established order – ‘The Establishment’: the ‘old boy’ network of gentlemen’s clubs where matters of state are discussed, the top echelons of the Treasury, Foreign Office, Department of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Defence and the high level industrialists and bankers whose revolving door links to top civil servants make it difficult to know where the line between government ends and the private sector begins (see Simon Regan's book 'Who killed Diana?' 1998).
As a result of the austerity measures, the management/PR arm of this establishment – political leaders such as PM Cameron and Vaudeville-esque parliament – is facing a legitimation crisis. If they fail to convince the public of their bogus democratic credentials, the riots that broke out last year may well turn out to be a precursor for something that the authorities will find much harder to control. Nevertheless, in surveillance Britain, the matter is already in hand.
Social philosopher Michael Foucault once noted that society now resembles a bright modern prison, but the bright visibility is a trap that makes it possible for institutions to track individuals throughout their lives. The people of Britain may care to take a few steps back to see how they have been sleepwalked on the back of the ‘war on terror’ or any other number of fear-mongering devices into a Foucauldian nightmare. In years to come, historians might well ask why people let this happen. They may conclude that too many people were perhaps too preoccupied with the ‘freedoms’ afforded by shopping malls, text messaging, computer games or a taxpayer-subsidised corporate-driven sports event to notice or even care.
Colin Todhunter : Originally from the northwest of England, writer Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the Deccan Herald (the Bangalore-based broadsheet), New Indian Express and Morning Star (Britain). His articles have on occasion also appeared in the Kathmandu Post, Rising Nepal, Gulf News, North East Times (India), State Times (India), Meghalaya Guardian, Indian Express and Southern Times (Africa). Various other publications have carried his work too, including the London Progressive Journal and Kisan Ki Awaaz (India's national farmers' magazine). A former social policy researcher, Colin has been published in the peer-reviewed journals Disability and Society and Social Research Update, and one of his articles appears in the book The A-Z of Social Research (Sage, 2003). He blogs at East by Northwest at http://colintodhunter.blogspot.in/
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