It’s easy to evade Big Brother, right?

12:02pm Monday 22nd October 2007

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HOW easy would it be to travel from Cambridge to Southend without being caught on CCTV or tracked by phone?

This was the challenge freelance journalist Ross Clark set himself in a study of surveillance and the Big Brother effect for his book, the Road to Southend Pier.

Mr Clark, 41, set off on May 16 to cover the 50 miles from his home to his destination of Southend Pier.

He said: "I went by car, but had to take all the back roads to avoid Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras. Also, I left my mobile phone at home.

"I had to leave the car on the outskirts of Leigh, because Southend is so well covered by CCTV.

I walked the rest of the way, and some of it had to be along the beach to avoid them.

"Southend Pier is covered by cameras so I knew I'd be seen - there was no point pretending. So I stood and waved at the camera and later asked the local authority for my pictures.

"They eventually tracked them down, but they were fuzzy. It goes to show it's possible, but took me two-and-a-half hours."

Mr Clark's original plan was to go to London, but because of the huge amount of cameras there, decided on somewhere along the Thames.

Eventually he hit upon the idea of Southend - despite its highly regarded CCTV network and control room. Mr Clark said: "We are all increasingly aware of surveillance, but not of what happens to it or what's done with it or how effective it is.

"The book looks at all these issues.

"One assumes the images are used for fighting crime because we are told it is used for that.

"But you start to question the point of it when I found out that 70 per cent of cases where CCTV images are requested in court turn out to be useless because they don't pick out faces or events."

His book also tackles the subject of surveillance as a whole - not just cameras, but also social internet sites and databases, including logs of shopping habits through store card databases.

The Road to Southend Pier is published by Harriman House is priced at £9.99.

Mr Clark will be signing copies of his book on Saturday, October 27, between noon and 2pm at Waterstone's, in The Royals, Southend.