Friday 13 November 2015

I-Spy Surveillance Books

In the years before digital surveillance and the government's Snooper's Charter, it was much harder for the state to spy on its citizens.

Without the technology we have today, the government had to rely on manpower, specifically from society's most innocent members - minors. Children in the UK especially were much easier to manipulate and were largely oblivious to the creeping diminishment of their civil liberties.

I-Spy books were published by the state and given as gifts, as well as distributed to schools, youth clubs and infant terror organisations (see "The Infant Liberation Front"). The books transformed the tedium of surveillance into play, encouraging children to routinely observe and record the actions, speech and private correspondence of people who the government deemed to be enemies of society. These included "free-thinkers, beneficiaries of welfare and other degenerates. [...] Extremists, potential extremists, and those whose profound lack of extremist attributes is extreme in itself, are also worthy of suspicion and censure."

The completed books even prompted children to spy on themselves, which many found difficult, even with the mirrors provided.

Each completed book was sent to a local government councillor whose job it was to forward the data to the relevant renditions team, and also to decide if any compensation was due to the child; for example, if the surveillance data they had submitted led to the arrest and execution of a parent.



More about surveillance in Scarfolk here:
"Unlearn Privacy Cards"
"We Watch You While You Sleep. TV Signal Intrusion"
"Roy, The Telekinetic Child-Owl"

8 comments:

  1. I've been in the toilet. Has anything been happening?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ciarán Ó Maoláin2 December 2015 at 16:41

      We know.

      Delete
    2. I'd give it 11 days , 2 hours and 42 mins if I were you.

      Delete
  2. I knew David Bellamy was up to something

    ReplyDelete
  3. I actually remember the I spy books. Alford primary school had a Book club once a year in October and you could choose 3 books. (For a price. I don't really miss my little fingers or gall bladder.). :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm trying to remember, was there a town similar to Scarfolk in America?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think you mean Nightvale

      Delete
    2. For a similar small-town "atmosphere',try rural Arizona,or New Mexico!

      Delete