Are you watching Big Brother?

Well probably not anymore as I gather it’s been scrapped. But another way of looking at it is to invert the question: is Big Brother watching you? Researcher Emmeline Taylor looks into surveillance in a secondary school on R4 Thinking Allowed.

I spy with my little eye: the use of CCTV in schools and the impact on privacy

CCTV is widely acknowledged to be ubiquitous in British urban areas. It is therefore not surprising that its use has seeped into institutions such as the school. As such it is important, perhaps more than ever, to be able to attribute an inherent value to privacy and demonstrate that its infringement facilitated by the burgeoning of technological surveillance practices could have potentially serious consequences for society. Drawing upon empirical research conducted in three secondary schools in the United Kingdom, this paper examines the value of privacy as perceived by pupils and the extent to which this is undermined or eradicated by the presence of CCTV cameras.