When I was in the UK (until 1990) it was already a very highly "surveilled" (does that word exist?) society. Revisting the place from time to time I have found that surveillance has only increased - but surprise surprise - people are no longer able to break laws that they used to break.
The surveillance in the late 80s and early 90s was not government security agency surveillance, but private surveillance. Police used radars on some highways, and highways in some areas had cameras. Some traffic intersections had cameras. But that apart, it was possible to drink and drive, and zoom at 100 plus mph on some stretches without fear of being caught. Private surveillance however was more evident and widespread. High street shops and supermarkets had cameras. These were obviously out of self interest, but almost invariably, these cameras were used by the private agencies to HELP Police in crime detection rather than selling stories of illicit kisses and fondles and liaisons to the Sun, Star or Daily Mirror. In 1993, in a much publicised incident, a 3 or 4 year old child was abducted from a supermarket and his body was found later near a railway track. It turned out that there were private surveillance cameras placed by the owners of some warehouses, and these cameras nailed the culprits who were recorded on camera leading the child away from the supermarket. The murderers turned out to be ten year old boys. There are many other examples of private surveillance equipment helping law enforcement rather than being used for either "sousveillance" or wanton breach of privacy. Princess Diana's last images were seen on a hotel camera, and the July 7th bombers in London were seen at an automatic teller machine in a bank camera. The police were late entrants to the technology game in the UK and now cameras have become commonplace in uncommon places. I drove about 1000 miles around the UK last year and saw automatic speed limit signs lighting up automatically warning me to slow down. Stung by the surveillance, I stayed at the speed limit and found that there were no more Beamers roaring past me at 120 mph. On single lane roads, everyone sat obediently behind me as long as I was heading at the statutory limit. India too is following its own course, although the timescales are probably truncated. Private surveillance appeared on the scene some years ago. The police had nothing - neither awareness nor equipment. Private surveillance in India however was utilized for media sting operations (which I enthusiastically support) - altough they were all technically breaches of privacy. Private non-governmental surveillance technology in India in fact has typically been used to breach privacy or break the law. A boy filmed himself having sex with his girlfriend and sold that on ebay. Last week a teacher was framed by a TV channel and was lynched by a mob. A couple of years ago an alumnus of my medical college did us proud by scanning an exam question paper with a pen-sized scanner, MMSed the images to others who SMSed the answers to many people across South India. In the early 1990 the pig-headed Indian Army establishment lost dozens of men who were coolly outwitted by terrorists and infiltrators at the India-Pakistan border using communication and vision equipment available off the shelf in the US - but unavailable to the army. This has changed only in the last 5-6 years - with the army being far better equipped than the terrorists at the borders. However, the technology and tech-savviness gap between terrorists and civilian police in India remains high and the police are probably just at the bumbling level - like the Indian army 15 years ago. About surveillance in toilets, the stories I have from different countries is different. The UK (as discussed on silklist IIRC) is moving away from shared toilet space to private cubicles. In India a teacher recently committed suicide because students filmed her in her bathroom and then blackmailed her. In the US an anti-gay Senator has resigned because a surveillance cop in the next cubicle next the senator in a public toilet reported that the senator solicited gay sex from him. The US is the only mad country in the world that seems to have toilets with walls raised from the floor. A person I know who is faculty at some university told me that he found a cellphone-camera being partially pushed into his cubicle from someone in the adjacent toilet. He complained and a student in the next cubicle had to face disciplinary action Everyone's "surveilling".
