Birmingham's spycam scheme has had its cover blown

“My campaign has helped expose ‘Project Champion’ for what it really is: ill-conceived, botched and counter-productive."

"The row over hundreds of surveillance cameras quietly installed to spy on whole communities in Birmingham – including my own – has grown louder and louder, forcing a halt to the scheme that now hangs suspended, dangling in mid-crisis just like the unwanted cameras. "Project Champion" now looks like a real loser.

The offending lenses will be covered over with bags, we are told, and a full public consultation will follow. Liberty is mounting a legal challenge and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will be investigating West Midlands police over whether they briefed or misled local councillors. My MP, Roger Godsiff, has tabled a debate in parliament and John Hemming, MP for Birmingham Yardley, informed me he has raised the issue with the home secretary.

This is quite a result for the campaign I started only two months ago. Along with a few other local residents and councillors who were also alert enough to have concerns and ask questions about the scheme, we have succeeded in exposing a major counterterrorism operation for what it is: ill conceived, poorly implemented, botched and – worst of all – potentially counterproductive.

Surely the plan to spy on whole communities in Birmingham could not have remained secret for long. The camera posts are hardly invisible: they resemble machine-gun turrets and are everywhere. And yet Britain is a society so used to the proliferation of CCTV cameras that they have become just part of our street furniture and are regarded as normal. All those other cameras act as camouflage; would anyone notice a few more? They are everywhere we look, except we have become sufficiently inured that we just don't see them any more. For that reason the whole affair could well have gone unnoticed and slipped under the radar, as intended.

The police strategy appears to have relied on the idea that nobody would notice a few hundred more cameras. After all, the population has been hoodwinked into believing these things are substitute police officers, a panacea for all types of crime, and that support for CCTV is somehow linked to good citizenship. Surely the only privacy-loving miscreants who would object to their every move being tracked and recorded on a database must be criminals? After all, if you were not doing anything wrong, why would you mind? These dangerous assumptions are wrong and must be challenged. It's worrying that few people I've spoken to recently seem to know what the words "civil liberties" mean. Fewer still will stand up and fight to protect them. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance", it's said, and never was that truer than right now in Birmingham.

Watching Nick Clegg's political reform speech on TV in May was a defining moment in my campaign. When the deputy prime minister promised that his government would "end the culture of spying on its citizens" I cheered as if England had just scored a goal. "Britain must not be a country where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question." Back of the net! It was as though I had written it myself.

I set up a Facebook group and a website to launch my campaign, then I wrote an article for a local magazine, started a petition and lobbied MPs and councillors to denounce the spy-cam scheme. After passing the story to Paul Lewis, at the Guardian, and Liberty I found I had officially become an activist, the leader and spokesman for the campaign to have the cameras removed. The campaign group, NO CCTV also contacted me. They had been following my campaign and were behind me all the way, offering support and useful information.

After I was quoted in two Guardian articles my phone did not stop ringing and I soon found myself at the centre of the storm, campaigning on local and national radio and television culminating in five media appearances in one day. It is safe to say now that the truth is out, but whether the spy-cam scheme will be abandoned remains to be seen.

Civil libertarians should watch with interest to see what happens next in Birmingham, as it has grave implications for the relationship between the state and the private individual. I suspect that apart from the home secretary, there is only one other person with the power to order a stop to this. So if you're listening, Nick Clegg, come to Birmingham's aid and restore our civil liberties, as you promised. It's an open goal and now is your chance to score."

The Guardian asked if I would write a few words about this campaign for the Liberty Central section of their website. And I was only too happy to oblige. For the full article go here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/steve-jolly

Article originally published on the Guardian website and posted on my old blog www.spyonmoseley.co.uk 23rd June 2010. (Re-posted here on 1st August 2010).

After a collaborative investigation with award-winning journalist, Paul Lewis, we nailed the story, which first broke nationally in The Guardian on 4th June 2010, sparking a series of Guardian articles, listed here in reverse chronological order:

18th June 2010: 'Police under fire over Muslim CTV surveillance scheme'

17th June 2010: 'Birmingham stops Muslim CCTV surveillance scheme'

17th June 2010: 'Birmingham stops camera surveillance in Muslim areas'

11th June 2010: 'Legal Fight over spy cameras in Muslim suburbs'

4th June 2010: 'Surveillance cameras spring up in Muslim areas - the targets? Terrorists'

4th June 2010: 'Surveillance cameras in Birmingham track Muslims' every move'

The story first came to public attention on 19th April 2010 on Birmingham news website, The Stirrer, run by local journalist and broadcaster, Adrian Goldberg.

The Stirrer was contacted by a Moseley resident who questioned the unexplained installation of CCTV cameras in Moseley, Birmingham - a suburb neighbouring the 'Balti Triangle' area of Sparkbrook, Birmingham. Local resident Chris Jones wrote an open letter to his local councillors, published here on The Stirrer website: 'CCTV - The Unanswered Questions' sparking a series of articles on the subject, starting here: The Stirrer - 'CCTV Articles 1' and continuing here: The Stirrer - 'CCTV Articles 2' and here:
The Stirrer - 'CCTV Articles 3'