1984

I have long concluded that just about everything I do and say these days is being taken down and will probably be used in evidence against me. But now I am wondering if I shouldn't be a bit more pro-active, in fact, if it wouldn't help if a lot of us were more pro-active. Perhaps if we could overwhelm the spies with domestic detail and detritus they might leave alone and concentrate on the REAL trouble makers? We could start by virtualising our shopping lists - go to Ta-da, create the list then nip down to the supermarket and retrieve it with our WAP mobile phones. We could annote the list with comments on quality and availability and then SMS it to all our friends...

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of keeping an eye on those who need an eye kept on them (be they criminals or would be terrorists), but I also think that the welfare of the majority is not best served by somebody tracking my every phone call or making my local library tell the govenment everytime I borrow "do it yourself flower arranging".

PS And since the BBC fails to offer the link on its story page mentioned above, the Electronic Frontier Foundation can be found here.

On the way to the airport...

A small highly streamlined and polished car zooms past proudly shouting P155 TOL in highly stylised italics. Glad to be leaving the land of CRP registrations and heading back to the bundu - even if winter is setting in there - I relish the prospect of absolute clear blue sky as far as the eye can see in all directions, heat while the sun shines, and the smell of woodsmoke when the sun has gone.