Monday, March 03, 2008

Has the Met been taking lessons from the Stasi?


I wonder, has the
Metropolitan Police (London U.K.) been taking lessons about how to run an informer society from the old East German Stasi (after all, those 90,000 ex-Stasi agents must have something to offer to someone)? Below is a jpeg of the Met's (along with the City of London Police and the British Transport Police) latest "Counter Terrorism" campaign (they are also targeting people being suspicious in their home or using cell-phones...hmm).


You can link to the
pdf here for a better look (as well as click on the images for a slightly bigger view):
THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS EVERY DAY. WHAT IF ONE OF THEM SEEMS ODD

Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks, taking photos and making notes about security measures like the location of CCTV cameras. If you see someone doing that we need to know. Let experienced Officers decide what action to take.
Funnily enough, I just came across a copy of Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier today in the library at work so he was on my mind as I looked at this. I wonder what old George would have thought...?


Peter Jones on the Streetphoto list brought the campaign to my attention and John Brownlow came up with a couple of suggestions about what their next few posters may say. I added one of my own as well. Funnily (and sadly) enough, they don't seem that far-fetched.
In all honesty (and I write as someone who has dealt with violent terrorists first hand - no armchair critic here) I have to ask - what on earth were they thinking when they came up with this?


All I can say is that 90% of the photographers that I know - obscure or well known - are a little "odd"...



(Oh, and if any Met Public Affairs wonks are reading this, the use of the poster comes under both satire and commentary fair use under all relevant Copyright legislation...)

6 comments:

Paul Russell said...

It's the "War on Oddness".

Davin Risk said...

Pretty easy to see the result of this being utterly useless bigoted reports of "odd", "dusky", or "towel" wearing men terrorizing with their shots of their family in front of Underground station signs and monuments. It's amazing how fear can get just about anything legislated.

ggosling said...

As Faithless put it "Fear is a weapon of mass destruction".

Tom White said...

This is actually really scary stuff. I've had numerous run-ins with the MET for 'suspicious' behaviour (ie photographing at protests, asking legitimate questions and generally being a concerned citizen) but these posters cross a line with me. Don't fascist governments encourage the population to report on each other's behaviour? Wasn't the purpose of the Stasi in Nazi Germany (for example) precisely to act on this information? I'm going to London next week (a city I lived in for 10 years) and am going to take a lot of pictures...

Anonymous said...

What a sleek, overt distopian figment! This is something straight out of 1984! I can't believe something like this was actually posted--that this kind of shameless paranoia is actually being advertised in a populous that is so...progressive? as the one of the major members of the West. It's just a matter of time, if this sort of this keeps up, until we find ourselves in a very dark, very contrived world.

ohsodainty said...

I can't believe these posters actually EXIST?! What if a co-worker seems ODD? seriously? Define odd....

This is incredibly creepy and I do hope the MET realize their incredulous campaign is just that. This needs to go. Now.

I feel like I'm in occupied Poland in the 80s for some strange reason.....