Surveillance Society

(One of the many inconspicuous corners at... ok, this will get me into trouble!)

I leave my home and there are 'Neighbourhood Watch' cameras watching me. I walk down my street, and there are traffic cameras. I get on to the bus, and there are tennis ball sized CCTV cameras concealed in the cieling of the bus. I step into the tube station and there are cameras at the entrance, in the ticket machine, on the escalators, in the stairways, on the platforms, and surprise surprise (!), cameras on the tube.

I walk down the lobby at my workplace; I notice the security screens at the reception through the corner of my eye and guess what -- in the pixellated image, I spot a figure with an uncanny resemblance and the same clothes as me. On the trading floor, the eye doesn't seem to blink, it only swivels stealthily. Taylorism in top gear.

Before I sip my morning tea, an average of 500 to 600 cameras in London have put me in their frames. Fact!

Identity cards, bio-metric data, and abstracted profiles in databases for every citizen, satellite surveillance, and the omni present roving eye.

Welcome to the show -- smile -- the real Big Brother is watching.