Police considering Chinese-style spying measures for 2012 Olympics

Worrying article in the Sunday Times: “Spy bugs may be deployed for 2012 Olympics“.

The police have looked at how the Chinese conducted their surveillance for the last Olympics, and are considering re-using some of their ideas. Such as:

• bugging taxis to listen in to any incriminating conversations
• using microchips on tickets and passes to track the movements of athletes, journalists and spectators
• facial recognition CCTV

What I find most frightening is the final line:
“Alan Campbell, the Home Office minister, has revealed that the Home Office is investigating technology that would allow police to halt a vehicle remotely“

Does anyone seriously consider that might be a good idea? Especially in the hands of the Metropolitan Police, or any other police force in this country.

Thanks to OurWorld OurSay for tweeting this originally.

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Photo from surfstyle‘s Flickr stream. Creative Commons license.

Holiday reading

So I’m off on holiday soon, and need to buy myself a good book. Something to read on the plane and beach when I’m not amusing myself with other diversions. Nothing too big or demanding – I realised recently that I don’t enjoy reading books of 600+ pages. I devote so much time to them, and usually they’re not the greatest book; but by the time I’ve realised that I’m more than half-way through and don’t want to quit, just for the sake of not quitting, not because I’m enjoying the book so much.

I had a couple of ideas of what I could buy:


obey_1984.jpg
Originally uploaded by radeondt
1984 by George Orwell. I’ve already got a copy of this, albeit in a large unwieldy hardback format. This paperback would be a bit handier. It’s one of my favourite novels, and I love the cover design by Shephard Fairey.

There’s a bit of discussion worth reading on the Penguin blogs about this new edition of 1984 and Orwell. From that I found this interesting article about Shephard Fairey’s plagiarism.

Did you know there’s now a George Orwell blog, re-publishing his diary entries? So far it’s mostly about country life, but I’m hoping it’ll pick up in time.

The other book I am thinking about for holiday is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I bought a copy of this for a friend’s christmas present a year or two ago, and thought it looked pretty good. Not the sort of thing I’d usually read though.

Year 2, Day 10: Not now, I’m reading!
Originally uploaded by PunkJr

Apart from that, no really strong ideas. Maybe A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick. I’ve read a few of his other novels and enjoyed them, and I’ve got the film on DVD.

Any suggestions? What have you been reading, or can you recommend any ‘must-read’ books? Here’s the last few books I’ve read recently:

• Freakonomics
• Into the Wild
• Miracles of Life by JG Ballard
• The Kraken Wakes
• Ubik
• Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown
• No Logo