28 Comments

It's interesting that as this campaign is spreading the phone is starting to ring. I've just spoken to a woman who is involved with a group who are very concerned about this issue of CCTVs being used in an abusive way and are concerned about the very issue Citizen Control TV has raised. It's not lead by some left wing activist but by a senior police office.
The more frightening thing is the number of people who won't join the Facebook group, scared they may be added to some dark database.
How free do you feel? It's a real question. But at least we are free to ask it.
Chris Arnold. Creative Orchestra.
Chris Arnold
2010-04-29 15:17:55

That's why it says "it starts with..."

I think that Britain is very much a nanny-state and a lot of stuff going on already reminds me of Nazi Germany.

Some people get harassed by the police because they're taking photos, apparently that's so terrorism.

Now there are CCTV's installed in households that apparently monitor "bad parenting".

Let's see the UK (England especially) in a few years or decades from now on, maybe you'll think differently then and see George Orwell was right.
Matt
2010-04-29 15:37:32

Its strange to have CR telling us what works or not or what's insensitive or not, I think the point that CCTV cameras are possibly the thin end of the wedge comes across well. I actually think you've got to be a bit dumb if you really think they are suggesting that CCTV cameras will lead to Nazisim.
NickT
2010-04-29 16:49:38

Having seen the negation and subordination of civil rights inb this country (US) following 9-11, keep in mind it only needs an 'opportunity' to 'protect' you to misappropriate power. I'm reminded of George Carlin's observation that given what happened to Japanese-Americans during WWII our 'rights' are really 'privliges'.
joel
2010-04-29 17:40:12

Well, it's not as bad as this...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/sep/08/aids-ad-hitler-germany
Ed Wright
2010-04-29 18:08:13

A great deal is still made about CCTV, I agree with some concerns but other bits seem like Daily Mail propaganda.

The real concerns on 'civil liberties' are anti-terror laws. Being able to arrest people with little to no evidence for 28 days is the REAL concern, not CCTV. This campaign feels slightly out of date, these kind of concerns about CCTV were banded about when Big Brother first hit our screens in 2000.

Its a shame that this campaign hasn't gone any further than the obvious Hitler/Nazi imagery.
MatthewNotMatt
2010-04-29 20:28:02

I think this image is a classic. The video is excellent as well. It does the job, it made me think. How free do I feel? Not a lot these days.
Mark, you should read up on Nazi Germany. I think you have missed the point. Like many ads, it uses symbolism to make a point. That point is to make you think and question. The reality of a dictatorship is shocking and there are many comparisons to methods of observation of society and controls. A paranoid society driven by fear is a dangerous one. American politicians have always used fear to control the masses and unite. Before that the church did the same. What we are facing in the UK is a different form of dictatorship, one that is not an individual, so harder to oppose and stop - Bureaucratic Fascism. And as the CCTV website puts it, once we've lost our freedoms they are gone for ever.
Thomas Walter-Beck
2010-04-30 01:07:23

I like that CR has featured this on their blog, I think examples of design encouraging debate about issues such as this should be more common. I believe that there are greater threats to our civil liberties than CCTV, but like Hitler is a symbol of Fascism and dictatorship, CCTV is a symbol of the erosion of civil liberties in Britain today.

I think a more interesting debate around CCTV is the illusion of safety that they create. The famous example being that a CCTV camera will not prevent you from being attacked, merely record it. For me, it encapsulates how Britain is a reactionary country, and one that does not deal with the prevention of problems.

I think the combination of Hitler and CCTV camera is interesting and captures attention which is ultimately the purpose.
Steve Leard
2010-04-30 10:48:40

I have to say that the image is very striking and really does make me think. The question posed is perfectly emphasised through the use of symbolism. How free do I feel? Less and less everyday.
Shaun
2010-04-30 10:51:39

Fabulous work. In 99% of cases a Hitler/Nazi analogy is unwarranted and self-defeating. In this case, it's spot on. You may not agree with the argument it raises, but it sure gets its point across. I hope to see it everywhere. Can't understand CR's editorial stance though.
Alistair
2010-04-30 11:55:58

He who sacrifices his privacy for security deserves neither.
n
2010-04-30 16:09:11

Surprising that no-one yet has commented that they've spelled "safety" incorrectly ("saftey") in the TV ad.

Possibly not germane to the overall conversation, but come on all you art directors - what about a bit of proofing?

Alan.
Alan Doherty
2010-04-30 16:34:37

This is the story of authority down the centuries : they stifle and suffocate people until they can't breathe, and then the people fight back. Think feudalism, press gangs, mines and cotton mills, National Service. Police and politicians have never understood the concept of freedom. And it baffles me that I haven't heard any journalist ask Brown, Cameron, and Clegg in this election campaign : "What, in 2010, is liberty? And where is it?"
Nick Robinson
2010-04-30 17:09:53

pisspoor banksy nonsense with a really cliched hitler image that doesnt actually directly relate to britains civil liberties or lack of thereof....

FTW. this makes me angry.
alex
2010-04-30 17:59:31

LONDON, UK (AP)-Government representatives today announced the apprehension and indictement for sedition of the officers of citizen control-tv as well as the creators of their controversial advertisements, "It starts with...", Creative Orchestra. The radical publication 'Creative Review"...
jgingerguy
2010-05-01 14:14:31

It makes no sense.

Hitler did not employ state powers to create order through observation, he bound a large proportion of the German population together by presenting a social/economical issue as a ethnic/racial/physical/sexual problem. The majority of German citizens actively embraced this destructive ideology, and thus there was little need for state observation.

The situation was radically different, however, in the U.S.S.R. where secret police and intelligence agencies became the states eyes and ears. Indeed, it was Stalin’s Russia that was the model for the Oceanic society depicted in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Even Big Brother’s imagery resembles Stalin’s facial features, (while the lack of embodiment could be read as a reference to Stalin’s ‘cult of the personality’).

Our first critique could be then that the design fails to acknowledge the detailed aspects of actual historical events. It appears ill-informed or does not consider such information to be of importance. If it did If then the faceless icon would have been Stalin, or a reference to the uniform of the Stasi, the secret police of former East Germany.

But this correction in historical correlation would still miss Mark’s important question – “Isn't it rather an insensitive jump to relate this aspect of civil rights concern with Hitler's Germany?

As I understand it, Mark is not only directing us to the reality of both situations and their lack of commonality, but also the use of Nazi imagery for situations that in reality do not qualify. Cracking a walnut with a sledge-hammer.

Why the scare tactics? Why not present a reasoned argument that would look at the effectiveness of CCTV. A bit of research would provide enough facts to see that CCTV does little or nothing to prevent crime (except car theft) but costs broadly the same to set up and maintain
The facts allow people to make informed judgments. Far from advocating their potential misuse, the imagery attached suggests we need CCTV, to defend the state against the potential totalitarians in our midst. Like a lot of so called ‘political design’, it’s akin to something out of the Daily Mail with it’s use of opinion, and scare tactics.
Josef
2010-05-02 16:26:14

In your piece about Citizen Control TV you say the UK is not becoming a police state without backing it up with any statistics except a powerful one that the UK has more CCTV cameras per head of population than any other country in the world. This by the states reckoning should mean its also one of the safest. Increasingly they are being used to police instead of the police, which is why certain social groups or 'targeted people' resort to wearing hoods wherever they go. In their election campaign Labour are proposing plans for communities to request cameras in their area to 'fight crime' rolling out victims of crime to promote the idea suggesting the crime would not have happened had there been video surveillance. Cameras are then more often used for commercial reasons by private companies for monitoring areas for fining illegal parking and other such revenue raising reasons. This i believe creates an atmosphere of persecution and the feeling of a surveillance state (even if the state is not doing most of the surveying). What will come of this? Google having access to all of this and selling it to all and sundry so we can all snoop on one another? I back this campaign whole heartedly and ask you not to be so naive.
oneoffphoto
2010-05-03 13:02:00

Great work Mark.
It’s worth looking at Heather Brooke’s article, ‘Investigation: A sharp focus on CCTV2’, for a much more informed, but still critical, approach [ http://bit.ly/bKVHAI ] with supporting illustrations by La Boca [ http://bit.ly/aIKMjH ]
MLA
2010-05-03 19:15:29

HOW FREE DO I FEEL? Not at all. Authorities, the Police, the Taxman, utility companies, councils, to name a few, all how powers beyond reason. The CCTV campaign captures just one aspect of out oppressive society. A society that is treated as guilty first. We are all criminals, terrorists, perverts, tax dodgers first.
The really dark site is probably hard to visualise. Data capture and the merger of data bases is frightening. 1984 seems child's play against what we haver now. I think George Orwell would be shocked.
Thomas Walter-Beck
2010-05-03 23:20:00

CCTV is always a question.

Is it here to protect or to spy?

A bit both i suppose....How would it be without it? More robbery and crime?
Etatmodern
2010-05-04 11:02:35

There are big issues here, but for me the most striking is that Creative Orchestra have clearly been carrying out their own surveilance on Noma Bar's work, and have pretty much ripped it off in the interests of their own brief.
gusbuster
2010-05-04 11:27:56

@ Steve Leard "Britain is a reactionary country, and one that does not deal with the prevention of problems." Definitely agree on that point.

At least we're all talking about the issue eh? Maybe that makes it successful visual communication?

Not too keen on it aesthetically though – feels too pastiche.
James Nelson
2010-05-04 13:23:43

i think the biggest problem is i saw charlie chaplin first, not adolph hitler...or does thats ay more about me?
tyler-ward
2010-05-04 16:28:38

A glib stencil. Now I've seen everything.
David
2010-05-04 20:16:04

Fantastic image.
Just wait until face recognition software is running on our many cctv cameras. Cosy.
But you have nothing to hided do you, so what the problem then....
Graphic Design Manchester
2010-05-06 02:07:33

The comparison between Hitler/ the Nazi party to the proliferation of CCTV across the UK seems a little spurious, and a case of style over substance - a better comparison might have been the Stasi or the Soviet Union under Stalin. Overall, it comes across as faintly risible, after all the Nazi party were responsible for the deaths (including many of its own citizens) of millions of people. With this in mind, this campaign seems misconceived and undermines its message.
James
2010-05-06 15:20:39

Great image -- really makes you think.



But, no - I won't join the Facebook group, for precisely the reason you suggest: because I will be added to 'some dark database'. That database is owned by Facebook and fully open to the perusal of the government in the interests of our national security. If I want to get a job requiring security clearance, they will consult it and see my connections with 'subversive' groups such as this.



At present they are only looking at it for the interests of our own safety, but as you say, where does it lead? CCTV is only the tip of the iceberg really isn't it? The underlying issue is the increasingly massive amounts of data which are available about everyone, and the sophisticated data-mining techniques being applied to it.
J Ellingson
2010-09-25 21:56:00

I might be a bit late to the discussion, but it seems some people here agree that comparing CCTV to the situation in Nazi Germany is not as precise as it was in the GDR ("stasi") or Sowjet Russia (mostly under Stalin).



This seems well thought out but falls for a common mistake: Although Nazi Germanymay not be known for its surveillance, but the extermination of peoples, its capabilities for the former made the latter possible: It is way easier to find Jews if you can just go through lists with family names and addresses (*) than having to ask the neighbours.



This is why today, German geeks sometimes like to call IBM Hollerith and why there was such an outrage when the census forms in the 80s where modified to include more detailed information.



So if you ask me, the comparison is apt.



(*) This is the same problem as today: Most jews probably did not think much of mentioning their religion during the Weimar republic. Sadly, data is quite persistent.
Tierlieb
2010-11-22 17:36:00

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