George Orwell’s Former London Home Now Surrounded by Dozens of Surveillance Cameras

April 4th, 2007

Via: This Is London:

The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984 has become a reality – in the shadow of the author’s former London home.

It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell’s vision of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person’s movements is now here.

According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras – one for every 14 people in the country – and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell’s fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

On the wall outside his former residence – flat number 27B – where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

5 Responses to “George Orwell’s Former London Home Now Surrounded by Dozens of Surveillance Cameras”

  1. sb says:

    It must suck to be British.

  2. Kevin says:

    Fascism sucks, period. Whether it’s British, American, Chinese, Israeli, Saudi or wherever, it sucks.

  3. Ned says:

    The protagonist of _1984_ admitted he didn’t know what year he lived in (history and Time itself being the Party’s sworn enemy) – so he picked a year that felt right. _1984_ could just as easily have been set 5 years from now.

  4. I. Makhumudov says:

    Wow! And I thought that a country like Britain – which yells its head off to others (like Russia) about “freedom”, “democracy” and “free speech” and “free enterprise” should be doing what it condemned and condemns us Russian “grey hulks” for. Just shows you, folks, what lies are being told … even by the most “righteous” in the international community.

  5. George Kenney says:

    And if you use your own video camera to shoot some footage, the government owns that too, or you go to jail.

    http://www.joshwolf.net/blog/?p=324

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.