The surveillance State made manifest!
Staring in early 2006, every movement your car makes will be tracked, if you happen to live in England, that is.
Everywhere you drive your car, your plate will be photographed, translated, and stored in a database. This is great, if you happen to have nefarious designs on people. Sure, I understand the potential use for the fighting of crime and terrorism. I also understand the abuse that will happen. And in my estimation, the bad FAR outweighs the good.
The guy that’s looking to rape you will now just punch up your tag number, and be able to figure out everywhere you go, and when. Congratulations, you’ve just created the stalker’s wettest dream. If you think that this cannot happen, you have never had your credit card number stolen from the inside. The people that work for the government are just as fucked up as everyone else, statistically speaking. Which means that there is some number of stalkers, rapists, pedophiles, etc. working in the Chief Constable’s office.
Of course, the individual violations aren’t the only negative. There’s the issue of privacy. You will no longer be able to travel anonymously, since someone will always know where you are.
And there’s also the fact that every government looks for new revenue opportunities by monetizing bad behavior. Look at seat-belt laws, the doubling of traffic violation fines in construction zones, red-light cameras and the shortening of yellow lights. Don’t think that they won’t be issuing automatic speeding tickets to everyone who dares go too quickly between cameras.
These cameras also make it really easy for the police to harrass you if you happen to have an unpopular opinion. And when the nanny-state becomes less, shall we say, benign? It’s a simple matter to track you down and arrest you.
I can hear you saying “But Brian, why do you care? This is happening in Britain. It couldn’t happen here in the United States!” Yeah? Bull. They’re putting cameras in the entire subway system in New York, and they’re already talking about surface cameras too.
And you know what comes after that.
You would do well to remember this one thing: Der Staat ist nicht Ihr Freund.