"Riots" Revisited and the Surveillance Society

A couple additional reflections on the "riots" (see previous post below). The comparison to the L.A. riots of 1992 may be more apt than I first imagined -- not in terms of the size and scope of the disruptions themselves, but in terms of the impact of the national psyche. As my fellow Des Moines native, author Bill Bryson has noted, this is a small island. Even little riots have a big impact.

I've been quite amazed at how much the Brits think and talk about the "riots." It's a national obsession. Everyone has a story: Riding the bus through what was supposed to be a fire-bombed area but seeing no damage at all, the guy at work with fancy new shoes he looted from a store in Birmingham, etc.

Britons have faced the aftermath with the traditional "stiff upper lip," but they're shaken. They feel as if the fabric of their society is coming undone. It's the topic of Sunday sermons, editorial essays, and daily conversations. It's all politicians can talk about. Of course, some of this is still media-fueled, as the aftermath remained the top story everywhere until this week, when Libya took over.

The other thing that's intriguing is how many people have been caught, charged, convicted and sentenced. Britain is a surveillance society -- there are cameras everywhere. Nearly every store has a sign saying "CCTV in use" (closed circuit TV is the British term for security video). Cameras are seen attached to commercial buildings, warehouses, and factories. Cameras monitor most public areas, including streets and highways. Speed cameras and red light cameras are everywhere.

I have my first traffic citation from our trip to Bath, where a traffic camera spotted my car (and several others) in a bus lane. (I will say, in my defense, that the bus lane was poorly marked, and the camera is clearly a revenue enhancement for the local government. But there will be no defense, because I'm not driving back to Bath to go the court. It's cheaper to pay the fine and be done with it.)

But I digress. The point is that the cameras are ubiquitous, and because there is no Fourth Amendment nor other tradition of a right to privacy, there is little complaint about them -- especially now. Because of the cameras, well over twenty-five hundred people have been arrested for their parts in the disturbances, and with the courts working overtime, there have already been more than a thousand convictions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2011/aug/12/england-riots-police-cctv-video

Both the disturbances and their aftermath have brought about a much different reaction here than I would expect in the U.S.