Walking on the Cracks on the pavement

To be honest I think I'd much rather have HAL watching me than some of the operators of the equipment that are out there these days. At least HAL had no malice - he was literally, and without ethical distractions, following orders. Anyway compare and contrast this piece in The Times by Philip Pullman with this from Jack Straw in the Guardian. I make no comment on which one I agree with as I am sure you can work that out for yourself. All this as we find out that taking pictures of policemen and members of the armed forces is now an issue. I have to add that in the best tradition of misquoting the US Constitution to justify carrying arms, this law does have a rider about the photos being useful in the preparation or commission of a terrorist offence but the point of contact between the boys in blue and the snapper himself has no formal definition and could well include "looking at me funny - having a bad attitude - wearing a loud shirt etc".

As I am sure has been pointed out and you might well have worked out for yourself, anyone wanting to carry out surveillance of this sort will probably do it covertly - I think our own security forces have some experience of this - and therefore me with my ruddy-great SLR is likely to be less of a risk but of course more of an easy target for someone relishing the idea of ripping the film from the camera with a cool flourish - sorry delicately removing the SD card and jumping up and down on it. Obviously I might be risking someone finishing reading at this point and be thinking that I am accusing people of this behaviour - I suspect in reality that my clean-cut, well-spoken image will let me take cheeky pictures of Policemen enjoying themselves at carnivals or covering up the wobbly bits of streakers - but that is not the point. I am loath to mention that taking pictures of the police was illegal in certain Eastern European countries - it may still be illegal - but it is true and that is the perceived idea of all this. Jack Straw may well believe that talk of a police state is scaremongering but the drip-drip of new regulations does not show us any benefit.

The regular mantra of the adolescent-minded supporters of such measures is that if you are not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear. Maybe at some point that is true but that only works if you agree that what someone is doing is actually wrong on a societal level - what happens when it catches you? Which of these is wrong - dropping a pasty wrapper and getting caught on CCTV and fined for doing it or being photographed driving at 42 in a 30 zone? Which one of these misdemeanours is more likely to kill someone? Where do you stand on that argument? I cannot say but I know that one will be used to justify the other in the name of the government knowing better than the proles.

I used to think that incompetence would be the reason that such massive surveillance programmes would fail - unfortunately it now seems that they will not fail and the incompetence will just lead to a heavy level of injustice. Don't care about the guy who looks like a terrorist today? What happens when they start taking away the wrong people by mistake tomorrow because I can guarantee that there will be mistakes.

I also add in Jack Straw's vetoing of the release of the Cabinet Minutes relating to the decision to go to war in Iraq. He said "It is a necessary decision to protect the public interest in effective cabinet government ..". Most people haven't got a clue what "effective cabinet government" is. I don't see any evidence of it around. Do you? Sounds dangerously like "there was a slanging match - we don't want you see how much like a sixth-form common room the cabinet meetings actually are so we are covering it up - yah boo sucks to you."