Sleepwalking into 1984?

Now, I’m guessing most of you who read the title would expect me to be against CCTV coverage based on the intrusion into our lives.

But, I’m not.

I’m in favour of CCTV, I think it helps in general. What I would highlight as people’s fears is not the fact they are being watched by CCTV but about what happens to the footage afterwards; [http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=4595&&&edition=1&ttl=20061102093902].

I do agree that more police officers are needed; I have a gut feeling that these same posters advocating more officers on the street will cry “Police State!”

I point out the usefulness of cameras; missing person cases where they were last seen is immensely useful [“I’m sorry madam but we can’t find your child as we’ve had to remove all the CCTV cameras, but we do have an extra 25 officers on duty across Birmingham …”], evidence in court, appeals for witnesses near crimes, traffic reports, accident detection, … usw.

We shouldn’t be advocating less cameras, but more control on the use of the footage.

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In other news, I’m feeling a bit under the weather today, having to miss Uni. It’s probably really mild and I could probably get to Uni and work, but I can’t risk it ahead of the S&T seminar this Saturday.

Ben is lending a hand with RailMan, as he wants to learn Python, which is welcome; I’ll hopefully convert him to it entirely :-)

I’ve stripped out a signal head for Chasewater, I’m awaiting the arrival of the LED’s so I can do a visibility test in the next week [apologies to my flat mates for all the banging and mess I’ve made]

Also, can people start using my new email address; samwwwblack at googlemail dot com, as I’ll be using my yahoo account for mailing lists only.