The Bellringers by Henry Porter (goes by the title The Dying Light in UK see previous post for the review) is one of those books that stays with you long after you've finished it. It goes around in your head, what if, what if. Suppose the government was beholden to a business magnate and allowed him to plant software in all government systems that mined the data about every person in the country and deduced their actions and fined or punished them accordingly using the police as their visible arm. You may be reading this shaking your head thinking oh she's really gone off the deep end this time but I haven't I'm being realistic.
Did you know that in the UK alone we have enough CCTV cameras to plot the route of your night out from your front door into the pub or club or house and back home again. Not all speed cameras have license plate recognition but on the major arteries and especially in the capital they do. Most of our transactions are computerized. That dullard Brown - the parachuted in UK prime minister - is about to bring in an ID card system and he's pushing for those intrusive body scanners at UK airports. All in the name of 'safety'. Porter points out in his afterword that he's just theorizing but all the measures and the tech he talks about in Bellringers already exists. While we were in UK the Daily Mail reported on a heavy handed group of police who confiscated the cameras of members of the public at the Christmas Day church service at Sandringham in Norfolk. Click on the title link above for the story, makes you think doesn't it....
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