I have never been the greatest fan of libertarianism as a political ideology. Libertarians seem to me to be the bisexuals of politics – they want a bit of everything.
But even I felt a slight twinge of libertarian sentiment this week when I read some remarks by our Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood. The Labour minister had told MPs that artificial intelligence is an ‘incredibly powerful tool that can and should be used by our police forces’, though she added that it must be regulated in a way that is ‘always accurate’. I have never before read the words ‘police’ and ‘always accurate’ in the same sentence, so the novelty grabbed my attention.
The problem is not the CCTV but – to use a technical term – that the police cannot be arsed
But it was what Mahmood was quoted as saying last month in an interview with Sir Tony Blair that really stood out. She had once again sung the virtues of AI and technology, explaining that they can be ‘transformative to the whole of the law and order space’.
She then said this: ‘When I was in Justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.’
The moment I read that I suffered my unexpected libertarian shudder. I do not want anyone in government – whether in Justice or the Home Office – talking about the eyes of the state being on me at all times. Then to my great relief I realised that what I had suffered was not a libertarian instinct at all. It was instead an instinct born out of basic understanding of the utter incompetence and indolence of the state.
We already live in one of the most heavily surveilled societies in the world. In London alone there are reckoned to be more than 100,000 public CCTV cameras. If you add the number of privately owned cameras you get around a million cameras focused on London and Londoners.
What does that get us? Allow me to relate my own experience the one time I had my wallet stolen in the capital. It was taken from my pocket in a public place which was heavily surveilled. In the immediate aftermath, the thief managed to use my card in a number of shops and a bank – and if there is one place that should be monitored you would have thought it would be the one where money is kept.
I got in touch with the police and told them about the theft, including the date and time the culprit had gone to collect my hard-earned money. When I did, eventually, hear back from them, the police informed me that they were not pursuing the crime. After all, why would they? It wasn’t as though the criminal would be likely to offend again, or that there are any good reasons for pickpockets to be pursued and arrested.
I raised this with a couple of friends this week after reading Mahmood’s remarks. One immediately piped up that her car had been stolen last year from outside her home. Her private security cameras had picked up a very clear image of the thief, and she had sent the picture to her local force. They told her that they would not be pursuing the case. Another friend had the same thing, but with a home burglary. Once again, she had got a very good image of the burglar, but officers were not interested.
Speak to almost anyone in the UK who has been a victim of crime and you will be rewarded with similar demoralising stories. London has one of the highest levels of mobile phone theft of any major city in the developed world. The gangs who swipe these phones from the hands of unsuspecting tourists or Londoners often commit their crimes in broad daylight.
I know several people whose phones have been pinched from them in Parliament Square. You might expect Westminster to be the most surveilled part of our heavily surveilled capital. But once more the police seem to have no interest in scouring the assorted CCTV footage and getting, say, the number plate on the motorbikes that the criminals sit on as they do their swipe. Again, the police say ‘no’.
One common excuse is that the cameras in the area were not working. ‘What – none of them?’ you might ask. By this point you would be forgiven for concluding that the problem is not in fact a complete and constant blackout on the capital’s CCTV cameras, but – to use a technical term – that the police cannot be arsed. It must be boring work to go through CCTV footage in order to track down criminals. Such a task could interrupt a morning’s crisp-eating while scrolling through X at the police station. And if you think that a member of the public providing the police with an image of a thief in the act should be evidence enough, then once more you just have to remember that they cannot be arsed.
The eyes of the state are already on us at all times, certainly when you are out in any major city. That is why, when the police actually want to catch a criminal, they can do so and we are treated to images of the culprit in our newspapers and on our TV screens. But these are rare occasions.
One thing we can all agree on is that if you do want to get the police to your house, all you need to say is that the person on your CCTV camera is suspected of saying rude things on social media about some minority groups. Then officers will come over and you will get grief counsellors and all the rest of it.
In the meantime Mahmood will, perforce, have to dream on. Even if the eyes of the state were on us at all times, we must remember that the state is having a siesta.
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