The Cambridge Panopticon: 10th September 2023

The chickens get it about right...

Ever get that strange feeling you are being watched? Welcome to the brave new world of Cambridge, where in the last few months surveillance cameras have been popping up on every other lamp post it seems.
Meanwhile, the roads are in a shocking state, and remain unrepaired. No money for that apparently.
"IT IS A Chinese state-owned company that is implicated in disturbing human rights violations. But that has not stopped Hikvision from gaining a major foothold in the United Kingdom. Through a network of corporate partners, the Hangzhou-based security firm has supplied its surveillance cameras for use on the British parliamentary estate, as well as to police, hospitals, schools, and universities throughout the country, according to sources and procurement records.
Hikvision, whose technology the U.S. government recently banned federal agencies from purchasing, is generating millions of dollars in annual revenue selling its technology to British companies and organizations. At the same time, it has been helping to establish an oppressive surveillance state in the Xinjiang region of China, where the Uighur ethnic minorities have been held in secret internment camps.
https://theintercept.com/2019/04/09/hikvision-cameras-uk-parliament/

"Mon 21 Sep 2020
Surveillance cameras made by Hikvision, the Chinese company that has been implicated in grave human rights violations and has been blacklisted by the US government, are being used across the UK, from leisure centres in London to school toilets in west Norfolk."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/21/chinese-spy-tech-firm-linked-uighur-abuses-increases-uk-presence

That famous Benjamin Franklin quote:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”
https://www.hoover.org/research/what-benjamin-franklin-really-said

And ironically...
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century