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Old 10-20-2007, 07:15 PM   #27
xoxoxoBruce
The future is unwritten
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
From here;
Quote:
By some estimates, 4.2 million CCTV cameras, or one for every 15 people, quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, monitor the comings and goings of almost everyone -- an average person is caught on camera up to 300 times a day.
Quote:
Surprisingly clear images of Britons engaged in apparently nefarious activities have become a staple on the evening news; few of the country's many terrorism trials unfold without the jury being presented with multiple images of the defendants purportedly carrying backpack bombs or driving up to a storehouse of explosives.

Pub patrons in one town last year had their fingerprints scanned as they walked in (bringing up their criminal records on a computer screen); some cities are considering putting electronic chips in household trash cans to measure output; a toll-free "smoke-free compliance line" takes snitch reports on violators of the new national ban on smoking in public places.

The DNA profile of every person arrested -- even those briefly detained for, say, loitering, and released without charge -- is on file in what is believed to be, per capita, the largest such database in the world, with 3.9 million samples. It includes the genetic markings of an estimated 40% of Britain's black male population.

For the majority of Britons, polls show, there is nothing at all wrong with much of this monitoring.
And that's the bottom line, is it not?
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