IF you're behaving yourself - you've nothing to worry about!

So goes the logic behind moves to stick CCTV camera surveillance just about everywhere in our district where the sun does shine.

Plans are afoot to have even more of those ubiquitous "cameras" casting a critical, eye over places like Carnforth and Heysham.

In Lancaster you're almost on film as soon as you've closed the front door and it's a little spooky to think that, after a trip into town to visit the building society, every move you've made could be captured on celluloid.

I walked through a car park the other day and a security camera followed my every step until I'd disappeared over the horizon. I was 'infamous' for fifteen minutes!

The experience was certainly unnerving but luckily I remembered that I was behaving myself... so I had nothing to worry about.

Anyway, we're told the public feel reassured by CCTV and those beady eyes in the sky have allegedly helped reduce crime. Policy makers have therefore decided that what we need is more, more and even more!

Who cares if our once sleepy district has started to resemble a sectarian-torn province of Northern Ireland, all decent law abiding citizens should feel comforted by the technological advances made by the surveillance and security industry which have been maximised to good effect by the authorities!

So let's throw out all those flaky civil liberty arguments and really get to grips with the CCTV logic.

Citizen Smith says let's have CCTV in the office of the council's chief executive? Here is a public servant dealing with important public issues, wouldn't it be fantastic to get everything recorded on film, just in case, you know, something goes wrong? And anyway, if the public servants are behaving themselves, there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

Or what about CCTV in the boardrooms of some of our great, multi-national companies as they table make or break decisions that will affect the lives of thousands of ordinary people. There's surely nothing to hide - it's all above board isn't it?

Government cabinet meetings, now there's a place that should certainly be filmed for posterity. And what possible argument could they have to refuse? And what about police in witness rooms as police force investigated neighbouring police force?

Confidentiality? Respect for privacy?

Oh, I see, perhaps civil liberty issues do matter. Perhaps people really don't like having cameras pointed at them.

So what about the priceless CCTV logic so readily espoused by big wigs and small minds across the land? The truth it seems is that Big Brother is almost upon us but some animals are more equal than others.

When thinking about CCTV consider these questions.

Who is being watched, who exactly is watching and how do you feel about being under surveillance?

The scary answer is that everyone is being watched, the authorities (whoever they are) are watching and how you feel about being under surveillance just doesn't come into it.

Not so long ago mass surveillance of the general public on this scale would have provoked a national outrage.

But, bit by bit, the traditionally libertarian British public has become one the most spied upon in the world and there's hardly been a whimper.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.