The idea
Stop the routine monitoring of people by CCTV, Automatic Number plate recognition, facial recognition technologies, Travel cards i.e. Oyster, Chips, storing of emails, tracking of Internet sites visited, tracking countries visited by people, storing of text messages etc. To halt implementation of new technologies around facial recognition or other methods to monitor and log the public’s movements.
Why is it important?
For many years now, we have seen senior figures from the Government, the Police and security services, putting forward the premise that more and more restrictions on civil liberties is of ‘no concern to ordinary law abiding people’. This is the belief system that would eventually argue for the ‘ID Chip’ implantation in all people at birth. What this fails to recognise, is that the decimation of civil liberties creates a society where those who in the future may come to power, would use these restrictions against the public, yet people would be powerless to challenge, change or demonstrate against. Ironically it is a situation warned of by George Orwell.
As a society, we do realise that full restoration of freedoms will mean that some people will commit crimes that they would not have been able to, but we also hold dear the belief that this is the price of freedom – that freedom does come with a price, but the loss of our freedom is a far greater price.