Candid Camera

The United Kingdom has become a surveillance state beyond anything approaching reason - one community council used covert surveillance to verify that a family lived in the proper school district for the school they sent their 3-year old to. So while England is a very nice place to visit, I'm now convinced that I'd never actually want to live there. I'm waiting for the place to become the Truman Show, or something.

But the United States might be getting just as crazy... but the feds are also cheap, so they're not bothering to install their own cameras. They just tap the people who made the cameras that you have, and say "Hey, turn that on." The FBI has been able to monitor people by having General Motors turn on the microphone in their OnStar systems so they could covertly listen in. As law-enforcement takes a stance of crime preemption, rather than just criminal investigation, they're going to be looking for more and more ways of monitoring people who might be criminals. And, let's face it, just about anybody can come up with a means and a motive to do something illegal. So I suspect that we're going to see more and more monitoring in the name of public safety and security.