According to the BBC, 'Britain is a surveillance society.' To what Essay

According to the BBC, 'Britain is a surveillance society.' To what extent does this compromise and conflict with people's right to privacy An Analysis - Essay Example Many critics were perplexed over the UK government wide usage of CCTV for surveillance as Britons always defending of their privacy at home. CCTV surveillance is concerned with social sorting. The surveillance system receives group and personal data so as to classify populations and people as per varying yardstick, to decide who should be targeted for suspicion, special treatment, inclusion, eligibility, and access etc. Oscar Gandy names it as the â€Å"panoptic sort† which is a discriminatory either fully or not automated technology. (Lyon 2003:20). The deployment of huge number of CCTV in Britain and its effect on civil liberties and on human rights, frequently is being debated across the nation. The main concern is that there exists no proper act or regulation concerning their use .The present UK’s coalition government has assured to initiate steps to address this issue and would look into plugging the existing holes like misuse of CCTV surveillance by authorities and to prevent human right abuses like invasion of individual’s privacy (Rowlinson 2008).... ( Wacks 2010:10). Prior to 1998, there were inconsistent and erratic voluntary Codes of Practices for the regulation of CCTV monitoring in Britain that were hardly adhered with. The legislation that regulates CCTV monitoring is of recent origin in the United Kingdom. The privacy issue was emphasised by the Human Rights Act, 1998. The truth is that there is even now no particular legal regime is existing to regulate CCTV which has probably resulted in the acknowledgement of United Kingdom as a CCTV surveillance hot spot. The only present regulations for regulating CCTV monitoring are to be seen in the common law on privacy, the Data Protection Act, 1998, the laws on criminal evidence which control the admissibility in court of info gathered by CCTV and under the provisions of breach of confidence. During recent times, the Information Commissioner issued both a Data Protection Code on Monitoring at Work and a specific CCTV Code of Practice which pinpoints specifically to the CCTV code and to camera surveillance activities. Recently, there has been an amendment in CCTV Code in the background of decision given in the contentious case namely Durant v. FSA. In this case, the Court of Appeal unpredictably shortened the broad interpretation of â€Å"personal data.† The camera surveillance in U.K had a serious impact due to verdict given in the Durant v. FSA where the Information Commissioner’s CCTV Code of Practice 2000 and the Data Protection Act, 1998 are applicable. Due to verdict given in the Durant case, the Data Protection Act is no more applicable to â€Å" basic CCTV systems† as they are not gathering â€Å" personal data â€Å" as regards to any citizen when they are able to focus on any individual or they are not intended despite images of