Smokescreen

Smile for the Cameras

The UK is one of the most heavily monitored countries in the world: Wandsworth in London has more CCTV cameras than Dublin, San Francisco, Boston and Johannesburg combined! It's hard to tell exactly how many cameras we have - it's anywhere from 1 million to a whopping 4.2 million, and others say that the UK has a fifth of all of the CCTV cameras that exist in the world! Schools are joining in too, as part of the Classwatch CCTV scheme - Stockwell Park School alone has one hundred cameras!

Does CCTV monitoring work?

When it works, CCTV footage can piece together a crime. It helped identify the 7/7 bombers, helps us track missing people, and in schools it's used to tackle bullying and theft, and to resolve classroom disputes.

However, there's real debate about whether it's worth the money (Stockwell Park's system costs £60,000 a year!), not to mention the invasion of privacy. Only one crime is solved for every 1000 CCTV cameras, and some people think it just moves crime and bullying away from areas covered by cameras rather than solving any real problems. Teachers are also worried that footage will be used to monitor their teaching and social behaviour - not just to stop bullying.

Did you know you can get any public CCTV footage you're in, using the Freedom of Information Act? In this mission, Jo's band, The Cutaway got one of their videos from a Freedom of Information request. They were inspired by a real-life Manchester band, The Get Out Clause, who cut together footage of themselves in various public locations to make a cool music video - and a political statement.

These requests are used for other important reasons too: various allegations of police assault have used CCTV footage to help their cases..

Guess My Password!

One of the easiest ways for people to get into your accounts isn't by stealing your password, it's by guessing it! Many people never change the default password - like Jo's school security system - or they pick very obvious, guessable passwords. 1 in 9 people use at least one of the passwords on this big list (warning: strong language!). Are you one of them?

If you are, don't panic: you're not on your own! Recently, a hacker got into Twitter by guessing the password to their server was (shockingly!) "password". He took control of many accounts and even posted fake updates from President Obama, Lily Allen and Britney Spears' accounts.

So, even large companies can fall prey to these sorts of "social engineering" attacks, which work because human beings are very predictable. It isn't about being an expert computer geek, just about exploiting human weaknesses.

Protect yourself: use letters, numbers and special characters in your password and keep it private.

Play Mission 9 again now!