Tuesday, 6 October 2009

Internet 'game' where people report real CCTV crime

It's important that you are in no doubt this isn't made up, so please do click through to the Daily Mail story:

Internet game that awards points for people spotting real crimes on CCTV is branded 'snooper's paradise'

Basically, "Internet Eyes" is the next step in the Stasification of Britain. Good civilised people will be able to access this 'game', watch real, live CCTV footage, and receive cash rewards in exchange for reporting the criminal acts of their fellow citizens. Essentially, this is training us to become little Stasi style informants.

Don't forget this story about hiring citizens to act as spies for local government

One of the big misunderstandings about Nazi Germany is that the Gestapo came and got everyone. While they may be scary on their own, they wouldn't have been nearly as efficient were it not for ordinary people who helped them, usually out of an instinct of self-preservation, or fear that they would be turned in by the other person if they didn't call the Gestapo first.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo#Daily_operations

Contrary to popular belief, the Gestapo was not an omnipotent agency that had agents in every nook and cranny of German society. "V-men", as undercover Gestapo agents were known, were used to infiltrate Social Democratic and Communist opposition groups, but this was the exception, not the rule. The District Office in Nuremberg, which had the responsibility for all of northern Bavaria employed a total of 80-100 informers in the years 1943-1945. The Gestapo office in Saarbrücken had at its service 50 informers in 1939.

As historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo was for the most part made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by ordinary Germans for their information. Indeed, the Gestapo was overwhelmed with denunciations and spent most of its time sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations. Far from being an all-powerful agency that knew everything about what was happening in German society, the local offices were understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many denunciations.
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"Our state collects more data than the Stasi ever did. It's time to fight back" - says Timothy Garton Ash writing for The Guardian.

2 comments:

  1. What a great idea for a game! Where do I sign up?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Might be fun when you're not the one being watched :P

    Big Brother, as in the TV show, trained us for this.

    ReplyDelete

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