This week Big Brother suffered a well deserved defeat in the Dutch city of Groningen: an experiment with 'listening cameras' in the Groningen inner city has turned out to be a complete failure. The aim of the experiment was to be able to detect ‘deviant behavior’. However, this happens to be technically infeasible: the microphones mounted onto the cameras cannot even distinguish a fight from a scooter passing by. Mayor Peter Rehwinkel has therefore decided to get rid of the microphones.
The decision by the mayor fits into a current European trend: on behest of the European Parliament the flow of money to the European Big Brother-project INDECT has recently been called to a halt. This project too was intended for detecting ‘deviant behavior’. With it the police expected to be able to predict and prevent crimes, much like in the
We will now need to wait for the development of new software to detect deviant Big Brother behavior of policy makers. Privacy First will keep you posted...! ;)
Sources: Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, July 20 & Webwereld 8 June 2011.
