Campaigner Against Camera Surveillance
This is a short film with Steve talking about the police state, big brother surveillance and
the war on terror.
Words by Steve Jolly, video production by Benjamin Wolfson.
Steve Jolly is an English graduate with a professional background in corporate communications, public and media relations.
Steve became an anti-surveillance campaigner in April 2010, when Birmingham police installed over 200 surveillance cameras to monitor two residential neighbourhoods in his city.
Steve blew the whistle on the Birmingham ‘spy’ cameras and was the spokesman for the campaign to have the cameras removed.
It grew into a cross-party coalition, ‘Birmingham Against Spy Cameras’, which organised a large public crisis meeting in Birmingham on 4th July 2010, dubbed the ‘Spycam Summit’. Speaking at the event, Shami Chakrabarti, Gareth Pierce and
Alex Deane joined members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, along with local councillors, in outright condemnation of the scheme.
The story attracted local, national and international media attention, causing considerable embarrassment to West Midlands Police and sparking questions in the House of Commons and some national debate. The human rights and civil liberties group Liberty were set to take West Midlands Police to a Judicial Review over the lawfulness of the operation. The surveillance operation was highly controversial, causing significant public anger and loss of trust in the police, who were forced to make a contrite public apology, later agreeing to scrap the scheme.
The plan involved 218 cameras forming a ‘vehicle movement net’ tracking every car, 36 video surveillance cameras and over 70 ‘covert’ cameras hidden in unknown locations.
The cameras were finally removed in May 2011.
Liberty shortlisted Steve for a human rights award in Dec 2010:
“For exceptional dedication to the rights of his community, exposing the grave infringement of privacy and misguided counter-terror policy embodied by Project Champion – and for succeeding in persuading the authorities to remove the CCTV and ANPR cameras before they were activated.”
Steve believes ‘Project Champion’ has implications beyond Birmingham and was a wake-up call to the surveillance state in Britain and the world.
Unchallenged, the ongoing drive for mass surveillance could result in the total blanket surveillance of entire an entire population at all times.
Technology has leaped ahead, while our liberty was left unattended. Surveillance techniques have become more extreme. We are still sleepwalking in a fully functioning total surveillance society. This rapid and dramatic change to our society is re-defining what it means to be free and eradicates all privacy. It also gives more power ‘than a bad man should have, or a good man should want.’
How did this happen? and what can we do? Our public servants are doing it in our name, on our behalf, with our consent. It all hinges on your consent. So stop consenting. Start finding out more, here: http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/
Steve has written articles about surveillance for the Guardian and Big Brother Watch. In March 2011 he gave evidence to a parliamentary committee about proposed surveillance camera legislation. Steve is now a spokesman and campaigner for No CCTV.
Webpage
http://www.no-cctv.org.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1362941340&sk=wall (No CCTV) https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119180531441911 (Birmingham Against Spy Cameras)
