Big Brother is Now Listening.

If you pause for a serene moment while walking or cycling down Aberdeen's Airyhall Road / Rocklands Road at sunrise you might be treated to a view of crepuscular rays.

Which is nice.

Buddha's Fingers. Sun Drawing Water. Ropes of Maui.

By chance, I'd stopped at the rear gate of the new private sector International School of Aberdeen at Pitfodels. Where I discovered that they reserve the right to surveil me not only by image capture, but also by audio recording. For my personal safety!

Operators name and contact details left blank, we notice.

Which is less nice.

According to their website, the International School of Aberdeen provides:
(Their emphasis.)

"a safe and caring learning environment where students are challenged to reach their maximum potential through academic success and personal growth, becoming socially responsible and active global citizens." 

Indeed. One of the ways in which they hope to achieve this "mission" is to spy upon passers-by who use the ancient right-of-way which runs past the rear of their high-tech new building.

We cannot help thinking that rather than producing high-school graduates who are "socially responsible and active global citizens", the poor expat kids who are educated behind this ring of stone and steel which bristles with such suspicion are more likely being engineered to become socially paranoid and insular, segregated from the society in which they live - implicitly and explicitly being taught that those who live in that society need watching. And listening out for.

Why do they want to hear us as well as watch?