Academic: CCTV Leads To inequality In Legal Cases

By Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News

Cambridge University academic, Ross Anderson, a professor of security engineering at the university and chair of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, today warned Parliament of the inequalities produced by electronic data, including CCTV pictures.

A growing number of academics, police and politicians are becoming ever more concerned about the Big Brother state juggernaut that is quickly eroding our civil liberties, removing our personal freedoms and destroying our privacy, due to Tony Blair’s Labour government since the horrific events of 9/11.

Professor Anderson will give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee’s inquiry into the “surveillance society” and follows on from last week, when Nick Eland, legal services manager of Tesco, and Martin Briggs, corporate affairs director of LMG, the firm that created the privacy invading Nectar cards, also presented evidence to the committee.

Professor Anderson said: “Surveillance creates an inequality of arms in both civil and criminal cases. The police can easily get CCTV or ANPR [automatic number plate recognition] data to show you committed a crime, but you have great difficulty getting this data to establish an alibi.

“A bank can get CCTV data to prove you made a disputed ATM transaction, but you can’t get this data to prove that you didn’t.”