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Big Brother is watching

Posted by putsimply on 26th March 2009

As predicted, an official complaint has been lodged against Google Earth for invasion of privacy, as now people can see where the MI5 office is and even what type of car is parked on your drive. So naturally everything of value has now been stolen and terrorists have taken over our government using all this information that was previously impossible to obtain. Heaven forbid someone could walk down the street and work these things out.

Now it has emerged that Councils in England and Wales have used controversial spying laws 10,000 times in the past five years. Earlier this week one Council said it had hired a ‘spy-plane’  with thermal imaging cameras at a cost of £30,000 to find out which homes are wasting energy.

As one MP pointed out, cameras are everywhere – our privacy is something that is being fast eroded. Rather than embarking on some Daily Mail-esque Crusade, I have no objection to CCTV cameras and don’t really care that anyone can go online and see the outside of my house, but our privacy is a fundamental right and something that we need to protect.

The line needs to be drawn when this moves from monitoring us in public to in our private lives. This all links back to the attack on Phorm by Tim Berners-Lee for spying on our internet usage – something far more personal than Google Street View will ever tell you.

putsimply