Orwell to turn over in grave, BBC reports

Not content to already bear the label of most endemically surveilled society in the European Union by Privacy International, the United Kingdom is turning its population surveillance efforts up a notch. The British government is spending $1 million to install closed-circuit televisions equipped with loudspeakers through which observers will reprimand ill-behaved pedestrians. The BBC reports:

'Talking' CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England. They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.

The barking camera scheme coincides with Tony Blair's "respect agenda," which aims to crack down on anti-social behavior in UK cities. The government hopes that holding contests in schools across the UK to choose the voice of the cameras will ratchet up the excitement level, but some Britons are less than thrilled at the prospect of being shouted at for petty wrongdoing. As for concerns that the scheme may infringe on civil liberties, Home Secretary John Reid denied that the barking cameras constitute "secret surveillance":

It's very public, it's interactive .... [T]he vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can't go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people."