BIG BROTHER B*****DS

No way!!
There are better ways of catching criminals than treating us all like one

I find it all a bit worrying, surely thats an invasion of privacy.

On a similar vain, my uncle recently got a visit from the CID making enquirys about a sherpa van he used to own in the 80s. Itd been used in some kind of murder in Glasgow.

How long do they keep these records? and who has access to them?

i'm sorry i drove into the back of your car officer but what with all these speed cameras about and the fact that i need my licence for all the traveling i do that inavertantly drove into you whilst watching my speedo because my repmoble is so comftable and quiet you just don't realise what speed your traveling at so i had to constantly look at the speedo instead of the road ;D ;D

Top idea, I think the fine for getting caught with no number plates is a lot less than most speeding fines ;)so how about making them so they flip under the car or spin round with an electric motor or something?

i saw one of them on ebay once.
it was a unit you put into your boot which sticks out in the numberplate slot ands at the flick of a swich it spins the plete round.
don't know what mister police man would think if he saw your number plate change near a speed camera tho!

Of course if it was doing us some good in catching people who actually do some harm then it'd be a good thing, but the point is hassling people who weren't speeding, or people who don't own a Sherpa that was used in a murder isn't catching anyone, and it rings of big brother that they keep your details for so long and without you knowing a thing about it. If they told us what they know about us it'd be different, but evidently they're able to keep details about us forever in order to make them incriminating later. "Ah, he owned that Sherpa years ago, that must make him an infamous Glasgow serial killer" etc etc. And as you say now you don't even need to be speeding for the telescreens, sorry speed cameras, to be able to pick you up at any time? It seems to me they're watching us every chance they get. I've said this before, but when the hell did I wake up an a George Orwell novel?!

Talking of hating the government etc etc, anyone else got the new Manic Street Preachers album? It's well good, but not as good as the Holy Bible or earlier stuff, oh by the way, The Holy Bible's just been re-released and it's well good, even more so since I'd previously had a home made CD of it made out of a casette I'd had of it, so it's great to hear my favourite Manics songs in decent quality for once, am currently listening to Yes very very very loudly!

If pedestrians had their details taken down each time they entered a certain street / area, there'd be uproar - yet us motorists are expected to take it without complaining. That said, "they" now have very advanced facial recognition software which can recognise you from CCTV images - so they probably know a lot about peoples movements in cities anyway (although whether they actually care where 99.9% of us are going is another matter

Regarding the SPECS incident, it could be that they reviewed the recordings after the accident in order to find possible witnesses (the same as they would review CCTV footage to find witnesses in other incidents) with the SPECS cams acting as CCTV recorders. By law footage from CCTV cameras must be destroyed after a certain period unless it is required by the police. The same would go for traffic monitoring cameras I would think.

I don't really like all this intrusive "Big Brother" monitoring, but to be perfectly honest I doubt whether the powers that be give a flying f*ck what I'm doing or where I'm going!

I think it's more a case of keeping us all obediant and subdued than catching us out when we walk down a certain street, that and allowing them to tax us to death at any time, most of their spying methods involve squeezing money out of us for the privelage of driving, by automatically recording where we went and how they can bill us for it. It's not completely Orwell, in that I don't believe that there's a "little beetle-like man" at the other end of a wire coming out of this computer who can see what I'm typing and is currently calling the thought police to take me away, but it's still not on that we can be monitored at all times by them for the purposes of fining/taxing/otherwise robbing us blind.

And it's true, it is getting so that they can make sure we don't step out of line, I've noticed lately anything that might stir us up against the b*stards, lately in my town there have been some pretty feeble attempts to stop the government shutting down the local hospital and most of the local schools, most of them involving weak "save our schools" style slogans. Anyway, I decided to do something noticeable, so I organised a campaign handing out leaflets and putting up posters with slogans and information telling people the truth, that the British Government is closing much of Inverclyde down in order to save money which they plan to keep for themselves, and was coming into some reasonable success, I've had lots of people coming up asking to be involved with the campaign and asking what the government's really up to etc etc, until I seen a lot of council employees/tossers in suits who were evidently council types tearing down the posters off the walls, telling people to give up the campaign, and in many case throwing large numbers of the posters into the gutters. Plus I had a relative of a council type come up to me, call me a "deranged unpatriaotic lunatic" or something along those lines, and tell me I', a liar. Nice to know they're not childish about it and can respect the principles of free speech, isn't it?

Anyway, this is getting very off topic, sorry there!

That's the other thing, all us innocent punters will be made to carry ID cards around with us and have no privacy at all, while any terrorist and professional criminal who wants to could easily make themself a fake one, or have one made up, so ID cards aren't going to cost Al Quieda b*stards or proffesional criminals any more than the cost to get a fake ID card made up for them. All that does happen is that we have to wear a bloody barcode and number on our shirts, that can be read by government tossers at any time to help them fine us for using certain streets, or fit us up for whatever crime they like, or whatever curse word BIG BROTHER I mean Gordon Brown has planned for us. Reminds me a little of Hitler's idea that all Jews in Germany had to wear a star and a number on their jacket so that the SS could identify them as Jews easier, which made it far easier to round them up for the ghettoes and deathcamps. As you can imagine, I don't like the idea of having a barcode or a number stuck to me for the rest of my life so that the government can do whatever rubbish they like to me.

As ive said before if you carry a mobile phone then its easy for the police to find out the places youve been at certain times. So big bro is watching.