Eyes everywhere
Becky – the 15 year old school refuser – came out with a tirade against surveillance and CCTV, ‘eyes everywhere, watching me, always’. She may have had a point.
Every day a spectral ‘me’ walks through the centre of the (recently evacuated) centre of Birmingham, recorded on a score of cameras. I teach live on CCTV (recorded to tape and kept for 30 days) in some of the IT bays as a result of a need for security against vandalism.
Investigators are now piecing together the external biography of four young men from Leeds. We have seen the rucksacks and the t-shirts, but are little the wiser regarding the inside. What is this dredging of the video record actually telling us? Anything useful? Perhaps it is the inside we need to understand – understand, not justify, condone, accept – rather urgently.