The French newspaper Le Monde has a number of articles on new plans from the French government for anti-terrorism legislation. On 6 September the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin presented a rough impression of 16 new measures to the members of parliament. The package will be presented to the Council of Ministers in October 2005.

Some of the proposed measures are:

-An extension of the scope of camera surveillance, to include the possibility to film the public streets in front of certain organisations that 'are exposed to the risk of terrorist acts'. In this context, specifically synagogues and confessional schools are mentioned, but local authorities may also order industry and public transport to do the same. Le Monde bluntly states that this intention clearly shows that terrorism is used as a pretext by de Villepin, since he tried to introduce such broader surveillance powers before he became Prime minister. The camera images will have to be kept for 1 month.

Publication by the Development and Statistics Directorate of the English Home Office of the results of the first major research into the application of CCTV in the UK. The general conclusion about the effects on criminality is that camera surveillance is a powerful instrument, but it must be acknowledged camera's are used in widely different contexts. It looks like a simple fix, but is much more complicated in reality.

"All the systems had the broad objective of reducing crime. Out of the 13 systems evaluated six showed a relatively substantial reduction in crime in the target area compared with the control area, but only two showed a statistically significant reduction relative to the control, and in one of these cases the change could be explained by the presence of confounding variables. Crime increased in seven areas but this could not be attributed to CCTV. The findings in these seven areas were inconclusive as a range of variables could account for the changes in crime levels, including fluctuations in crime rates caused by seasonal, divisional and national trends and additional initiatives."

The European Commission puts nanotechnology high on the political agenda with its Communication 'Towards a European strategy for nanotechnology'. The communication has been discussed at the political level in the European Council under the Irish and Dutch presidencies during the year 2004, and an on-line open consultation on the communication was held between August and October 2004 by Nanoforum, the EU sponsored thematic network on nanotechnology. The Nanoforum received some 750 responses to the consultation. Half of the respondents came from the research community.

The consultation concludes that nanotechnology will have a strong impact on European industry and its citizens within only ten years from now. Nanotechnology will have its strongest impact on chemistry and materials,

The magazine 'Surveillance & Society' has a special double issue online about the politics and practice of CCTV. Under the title 'The Politics of CCTV in Europe and Beyond' the magazine examines the extraordinarily fast growth of closed circuit television (CCTV) in western societies. Papers on regulation and governance and a large number of case studies describe various aspects of the the growth in the use of CCTV, from its use in the private sector, public spaces, large scale 'open street' CCTV and gradually its ubiquitous presence. The editors question the motives to implement CCTV on such a large scale: "The extent to which such measures do anything to protect from further tragedies is questionable, but largely irrelevant. For politicians, there is a need to be seen to be doing

The organising committee of the Big Brother Awards Switzerland has published a map of more than 70 video surveillance cameras in a city district of Zurich (Switzerland). The map was presented on the occasion of a public camera-spotting walk on 10 April 2004, that was organised as part of the annual 'Spring surveillance' events.

Most of the cameras are installed by private entities, some of them are dummies. The cameras are categorised by a special typology. The map can also be downloaded as a PDF file. Previously, in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, several cities were mapped.

Online surveillance map Zurich
http://www.bigbrotherawards.ch/doc/cctv/

Map Brussels
http://www.constantvzw.com/survcam/

Map 13 German cities, including Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart
http://www.dergrossebruder.org/main.php?id=34000

With four million CCTV cameras watching the public, the UK now has the highest level of surveillance in the world. The number of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras has quadrupled in the past three years, and there is now one camera for every 14 people in the UK. According to an article in the newspaper The Independent, residents of a city such as London can each expect to be captured on CCTV cameras up to 300 times a day.

The Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, appointed to supervise data protection, responded on 13 January with an instruction to the operators of the cameras to destroy images of people caught on film as soon as possible.

The next day Thomas announced more measures to help organisations and businesses interprete the Data Protection Act of 1998. These measures include strengthening the Data Protection Helpline, developing more practical and user friendly guidance for organisations and a renewed call for responses to a consultation announced in the summer of 2003 on 'making data protection simpler'.

The UK police are coming to the end of their second phase trials on Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and preparing to roll out the technology nationwide next summer. ANPR tracks cars using the omnipresent CCTV systems and specialised fixed and mobile cameras. It can use government databases to detect untaxed, unroadworthy and uninsured vehicles. It also means that over time a record of the majority of car journeys around the country will be built up.

Privacy advocates have warned that 'function creep' will mean that these records become used for many purposes unrelated to their initial justification.

The European data protection commissioners, united in the Article 29 Working Party, invite the public to respond to a position paper about videosurveillance. The paper gives an interesting overview of the differences in legislation and measures adopted in the different member states since the transposition of the Privacy Directive (95/46/EC).

The Commissioners are specifically worried about 7 cases, resulting from experience or tests currently in progress:

• permanent interconnection of video surveillance systems;
• association of image and biometric data such as fingerprints (banks);
• use of voice identification systems;
• implementation of indexing systems that can automatically retrieve images ;
• use of facial recognition systems that can automatically identify certain individuals on the basis of templates and/or standard identity-kits (like skin-colour);