[Infowarrior] - London's Amazingly Explicit Surveillance State Mascot For The 2012 Olympics

[Richard Forno]

London's Amazingly Explicit Surveillance State Mascot For The 2012 Olympics Has A Huge Camera Eye That 'Records Everything'
 
Olympic mascots are often controversial. Usually this is because they are weird blobby cartoon characters with goofy names that seem to have been dreamed up by creators who mainlined Mountain Dew Code Red while watching 24 straight hours of Pokemon. The official mascot for the 2012 Olympics, set in London, has that going for it but is also controversial for an entirely different reason. London, the premiere panoptic city was one of the first to blanket itself with CCTV cameras; its heavy security and surveillance cordon is nicknamed the Ring of Steel. London decided to make its surveillance yen a dominant feature of its otherwise goofy mascots. “Wenlock” and “Mandeville” both have a huge single eye made out of a camera lens so that they can “record everything.” Image at right is from the official London Olympics website.

In case that’s too subtle for you, the Olympic organizers have offered a dress-up version of Wenlock in a policeman outfit. “This has to be a joke. Please let this be a joke,” tweeted a privacy enthusiast I follow on Twitter, linking to this:

It is not in fact a joke; Surveillance State Wenlock also shows up on the official shopping page for the  London 2012 Olympics. The origin story for the sibling surveillance enthusiasts is that “they were fashioned from droplets of the steel used to build the Olympic stadium,” reports the Guardian, saying the Olympic Committee passed over “anthropomorphic pigeons, an animated tea pot and a Big Ben with arms and legs” to choose the all-seeing mascots.

A surveillance mascot is appropriate for the 2012 Games. This Olympics will certainly win a gold medal for security measures. From the Guardian:

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/05/17/londons-amazingly-explicit-surveillance-state-mascot-for-the-2012-olympics-has-a-huge-camera-eye-that-records-everything/

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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.