UK Privacy Under Attack, Again – Welcome to Big Brother 2.0

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The UK is widely known to be one of the most surveilled countries in the world.  According to The Daily Mail “There are already 4.2million cameras trained on the public.”

Now, The Daily Mail is reporting on new technology that promises to take terrifying new steps towards become a full police-state complete with Dream Police and Tendency Indicators:

“CCTV cameras which can ‘predict’ if a crime is about to take place are being introduced on Britain’s streets. The cameras can alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering and unusually slow walking. Anyone spotted could then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer.”

Someday people will wonder if it was worth trading in their privacy rights for a false sense of security but by then it will be far too late.

Aussie Police ARE the Pirates

Oh, irony, you sweet mistress, you.  TorrentFreak (via The Australian) is reporting that hundreds of pirated movie files were found on the computers of an Australian Police IT unit!

“If the officers do go unpunished, it could create a favorable precedent for filesharers in South Australia. If police officers, who are expected to be held to a greater level of accountability regarding the law, show this level of contempt for the current copyright laws, are unpunished, it will make it harder to convince a court that regular citizen should be punished for similar acts.”

This really could be one of the steps that forces legal systems around the world to rewrite their laws around copywrite.  Imagine how many people would have to be prosecuted if anyone who ever downloaded or copied a “protected” file was actually found out.