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There's not much difference between my self-plotted route and the GPS route on when the roads are laid down in a grid. But a city nearby where I live has lots of curvy and bendy roads. When I plot a route on my own using a map, I tend to use intuitive directions - take a road until I'd pass the destination, turn, take the second road until I'd pass the destination, turn, take the third road until I'd pass the destination, etc. Basically, unravel the twisty roads into a quasi-grid, and plot a route along that grid. When I let the GPS plot the route, it comes up with seemingly-crazy directions where I change to a parallel road halfway to the destination for no reason than because it shaves 0.1 miles off the distance.

A similar thing happens with subway maps. At first subways tried using geographically accurate maps. But they soon found that subway riders had trouble learning the stops and when to get off. So they simplified the maps by straightening out a lot of the kinks and curves. The result is no longer geographically accurate, but is a lot easier for people to remember.

I'll give you one example I could find:

Since 2003, 33 UK citizens (including some with dual citizenship) have been extradited to the US, while 7 US citizens have been extradited to the US.

Not exactly equal numbers, but yeah, it actually does go both ways. It's not really too surprising that more criminals would be extradited to the US than from. This can be explained by the fact that the US is probably the world's biggest target, both economically and politically. For instance, there are many foreigners (and in fact, foreign countries) who counterfeit US banknotes. There's less motivation for US citizens to target foreign nationals or corporations than vice versa.

Or, I suppose you could chalk it up to some nefarious reason why the US government would want to harbor suspected US criminals, though I can't for the life of me figure out why they would want to do so.

search for PKI jammer, ESC Law Enforcement Supplies, the Homeland Security Act 2002, the fact that CELL PHONES COME WITH WARNINGS THAT THEY'RE NOT TO BE USED TO MAKE EMERGENCY CALLS, the Apple IMEI killswitch patent, the fact that TETRA (ERT radio systems) uses UHF rather than VHF hence is not vulnerable to commercially available jamming equipment, oh this is a pearler: the Metropolitan Police Service (a CIVILIAN agency) claims National Security considerations as an excuse to refuse to confirm that it is in fact using IMSI catchers and other equipment to interfere with OTA communications during times of what they would refer to as "civil unrest". This is the only link I'm giving you, search the rest yourself: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com... they're all over the fucking place.

If you're in the UK, check out http://www.whatdotheyknow.com, which does a lot of this for free. Also, they've been setting up lots of international branches of it (an open source project) called 'Alavateli': http://www.alaveteli.org/.

http://www.alaveteli.org/ is an open source FOIA tool, that can be localized for any country. it's operating on an EU level, and in many EU countries, including UK, Hungary, etc. for an English language adaptation, see: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ or http://www.asktheeu.org/

As a resident of a small island off the West coast of Europe, and having done my research, I can tell you now that Europe as a whole is not innocent; particularly Norway, where one fifth of the child population is in State care, or the UK where children of foreign nationals from at least 116 countries including the United States, Australia, Mexico, India, Pakistan, China and the former Soviet republics are taken by the THOUSANDS by the State to feed the adoption and fostering industry.

Details to follow. Meantime, the information is ALL public domain and available on this link.

FOIA, used in the right way, is a fantastic way to embarrass public authorities into telling the truth. When you already have the information (they don't know that - yet) and you ask them what you already know, they should be aware that a certain percentage of the questions they get asked are already answered; their credibility hence qualification to govern depends entirely upon their answer. Since such enquiries are covered under a Statutory Instrument, their responses are also covered under the same SI. Ergo, if they lie and they caught in it on a public forum then that is all the proof needed to legally disqualify them from their positions.

Gentlemen, call your lawyers.

In the UK, about £7000 was donated to the taxman from 2002-2010

No, it's only recognised to the extent that enough people wrote in "Jedi" on the last census that the Office for National Statistics assigned a code number for data entry purposes, and calculated a total for them instead of just lumping them in with "other". There are only seven options for religion on the census form: None, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, and "other, please write in".

The Office for National Statistics is not recognising religions, it's just reporting what people wrote in as their answer to the question, "what is your religion?" Other answers which have equal status include Secularism, Satanism, Heathen, Divine Light Mission, Rationalist, Own Belief System, Free Church of Love, and Church of All Religion.

London has been that way for years.

No, it hasn't.

From the article, "[Chicago] links the 1,500 cameras that police have placed in trouble spots with thousands more--police won't say how many--that have been installed by other government agencies and the private sector in city buses, businesses, public schools, subway stations, housing projects and elsewhere. Even home owners can contribute camera feeds." -- but in London, any part of the government that's installed cameras has to say where they are (example), and private sector cameras aren't linked up to anything.

1. The Gallery spent £18,000 to put its collections online in 1999. During a ten year period up to 2008 another £10,000 was spent on minor developments and adjustments and in 2008 and 2009 a further £11,000 was spent. This gives a total figure of £39,000.

Their costs in the last 5 years were thus £11,000 plus some fraction of the £10,000 spent between 1999-2008. Why are they now claiming their costs were about 50 times that?

I can see a use for pilots to help in navigation, an all over body suit with electrodes and a HUD interacting with vibrations and colors to produce a map he can feel, as in turbulence would be more viscous that clear air. Or incoming obstables, the vibration to get your attention and the color on the HUD to tell you what it is. You could also combine it with sound ..
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Requesting records in non-MS formats FoF 381002R Mar 03 2009

The Home Office's response can be viewed here.

Try making a Freedom of Information request to a UK local authority (local government) for the locations of all the publicly owned CCTV cameras in the area. You'll get something like this: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/search/cctv

Doesn't seem very Orwellian to me.

Even though your post hase been modded up to +5 (I have modifiers, so that might not be right) there are no replies.... and this isn't a proper one either.

I think the lack of replies shows how a system that supposedly exists to free government infomation isn't very approachable at all.... and the cynic in me says the authorities would have wanted it that way.

I added this site to my bookmarks the otherday... looks interesting
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/
But the UK gov do seem to try and make URLs predictable:
http://www.foi.gov.uk/

But no, I can't answer your question. That Daily Heil article mentioned numbers of councils who do use the act, and those who don't.... Wish they'd publish them too.

Freedom of information Act applies to public bodies. Use it more! There is a good interface for it at http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ The act is a good thing, but lacking, you can only ask questions and get spun replies, not access to documents.