News and other Busyness

Inflated CCTV Action

Brainless activist rescued by fire service

Squall 15, Summer 1997, pg. 6.

Britain's newest activist, Randy Sandy, made her direct debut up a street spy camera pole in a May action against CCTV in Brighton.

Pumped up and ready to go, Sandy, wearing nothing but a sash covering her most delicate parts, perched excruciatingly between the metal spikes which guard the rotating cyber cyclops. But she had a bit of a let down when firemen were called to remove her from the pole on which she'd been erected, as she cannot climb or walk.

Sandy, who has no ears and wears a constantly astonished expression, was said to be a little deflated after the experience. Asked how she was feeling, she could only whisper: "Pffffffffffffffffgh." She is, of course, a blow-up doll.

Three people were given police bail after being arrested for suspicion of criminal damage, for climbing up other cameras in the town centre, in what is believed to be the first organised direct action against spy surveillance in the world.

In one action a piece of Spanish street theatre (part of the Brighton Festival) was halted while one camera wrestled with a bag over its head. One Brighton resident refused to come down for two hours from his pole, from which he says a camera looks straight into his bedroom window.

Another troop carrying balloons blagged into an office block where Sussex Police's mobile camera had been placed on the roof to spy on a direct action conference. They told workers they were having a "surprise birthday party for their Big Brother". The merry throng were thwarted at the 19th floor.

GZ