UK Has Become a "Surveillance Society"

cultrhetor writes "In a story released by the BBC, Richard Thomas, the information commissioner for Great Britain, says that fears of the nation's 'sleep-walk into a surveillance society' have become reality. Surveillance ranges from data monitoring (credit cards, mobiles, and loyalty card information), US security agencies monitoring telecommunications traffic, to key stroke logging at work. From the article, the report 'predicts that by 2016 shoppers could be scanned as they enter stores, schools could bring in cards allowing parents to monitor what their children eat, and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk.' The report's co-author, Dr. David Murakami-Wood, told BBC News that, compared to other Western nations, Britain was the 'most surveilled country.' He goes on to note: 'We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us.'"

Comments

Re:Funny

[Poppler]

for my own part I think that it might help reduce crime by increasing the probability of getting caught and thus changing the pay-off matrix for the criminals

It doesn't.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2192911.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/ 4294693.stm

Of coarse, it's your country, and it's none of my business that you let your government monitor you. Just don't let them fool you into thinking it's useful for deterring crime. Violent crime in particular is often not a rational act; most criminals are not putting the risk and reward through an algorithm to determine whether or not they should commit the crime.