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.

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Surveillance is fun! Surveillance is cuddly! Surveillance makes you healthier! In an animated film about the birth of Wenlock and Mandeville, a steelworker gives the ever-recording dolls to his grandchildren who are thrilled with them:

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There’s a reason why there’s so much great literature (Ken MacLeod’s Intrusion, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother) and TV (Black Mirror) coming out of the UK that contemplate dystopic futures and unbundle the way that surveillance technologies, while simplifying our lives, imperil civil liberties and freedom of expression in ways unforeseen even by George Orwell. It seems that those in the UK are already living in that world.

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/