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Councils Recruit Unpaid Volunteers To Spy On Their Neighbors

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the this-sounds-familiar dept.

Several readers have written to tell us that a recent move in the UK has councils relying on info from "Citizen Snoopers" to report the transgressions of their neighbors. Currently only implemented as "environment volunteers" designed to keep watch on things like litter, dog habits, and improper trash sorting, there is a certain amount of trepidation that this could grow into something more sinister. "It will fuel fears that Britain is lurching towards a Big Brother society, following the revelation this week that the Home Office is extending some police powers to council staff and private security guards. Critics said the latest scheme could easily be abused and encourage a culture of bin spies and curtain twitchers. Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'Snooping on your neighbors to report recycling infringements sounds like something straight out of the East German Stasi's copybook.'"

4 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. And this won't be missused... by apathy+maybe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Like fuck it won't.

    I don't like my neighbour, the dog. Yup, the neighbour didn't clean up after their dog.

    Yes, they are not sorting their recycling.

    This sort of shit moves society away from an open society to a society of fear. I would have thought that getting people to work together and trust each other (and deserve that trust) would be much better then getting them to mistrust and fear their neighbours.

    Same sort of shit where doctors for children and podiatrists are mistaken for "paedophiles".

    --
    I wank in the shower.
    1. Re:And this won't be missused... by Nursie · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Face it, our society is broken. (I'm British).

      The place is full of busybodies and curtain twitchers, people who think they know best, the "think of the children" pro-censorship crowd, the people who fully support the government's creeping "terror" legislation (yes they exist, in droves. Only bad people fall under suspicion, remember?), reactionary anti-europeans and nationalists (I agree the EU has problems, but the "they'll never take our pound!" crowd piss me off)...

      That's coupled with a government who run the country by knee-jerk and grant themselves ever more power, money and manpower, bring in badly defined bans (extreme porn anyone?) and seem to get off on stripping us of rights.

      The law is out of touch with reality and with society; though if it actually reflected the people we'd all be in trouble too, hanging would be back in a week. OTOH if the law was actually sensible and the government stopped their weekly crackdowns on freedom then more people might start to respect it and not just break the law and disregard everyone else. Currently the attitude seems to be "Everything's iullegal, so I'll just do what the hell I like when I think I have a chance not to be caught".

      No politician has the balls to do what needs to be done though (legalise drugs, review speed limits, take away hundreds of little pieces of legislated social engineering, castrate and massively cull the public sector), so IMHO we're fucked.

      Frankly I'm getting the hell out of here.

    2. Re:And this won't be missused... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm from Romania and I remember the way it was before the 1989 revolution, during the communism years. The biggest differences are that the people that would spy on you were getting paid for that and you'd get burned if anyone heard you say anything about the regime. FTFA, criticizing the current regime won't get your ass in jail and these people aren't getting paid to spy on you; other than that it's just the way it was pre-1989 Romania. - Anonymous Coward for a good reason.

  2. Police don't do anything by dattaway · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Don't worry. I have a drug house in front of mine. That means we get a lot of vandalism, theft, noise, car crashes, and a loss of sleep at night. So I bought a top of the line camera ($2500) to catch the action and turn it into the police. They like the pretty pictures of the drugs and cash trading hands, but after a few months, the drug house is still going strong:

    http://rs6.risingnet.net/~dattaway/shame

    Here's the Axis network webcam for you to play with (you'll quickly find out I'm in the USA where bandwidth SUCKS!)

    http://www.dattaway.net/