The Orwellian posters, adverts and their ilk that are going up to warn us to snoop on our neighbours report legitimately suspicious behaviour, such as not recycling the glass bottles have invevitably lead to a website to make you your own fake versions.

Make your own at http://jamesholden.net/billboard/

Via: RailwayEye

Tip to people who make these mock image websites – allow direct linking to the website with the created image. I had to save the image, resize it and upload it to the blog, which also means I can’t just send a link of a joke billboard I made to friends. Yes, it pushes your bandwidth though the roof, but is very good for viral distribution and long term link building/search rankings.

For various reasons, I was googling around for a bit of background info on the Maoist terrorists in India’s Bihar State to pad out a news article I am writing, and Google decided to ask me the following:

Google Link

Records of journeys made by people using smart cards that allow 17 million Britons to travel by underground, bus and train with a single swipe at the ticket barrier are among a welter of private information held by the state to which MI5 and police counter-terrorism officers want access in order to help identify patterns of suspicious behaviour.

One solution being debated in Whitehall is an unprecedented unlocking of data held by public bodies, such as the Oyster card records maintained by Transport for London and smart cards soon to be introduced in other cities in the UK, for use in the war against terror. The Office of the Information Commissioner, the watchdog governing data privacy, confirmed last night that it had discussed the issue with government but declined to give details, citing issues of national security.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/mar/16/uksecurity.terrorism/print

Now that the Oyster card can be hacked, we learn that MI5 thinks the system is good enough to assist in preventing terrorism.

The two situations don’t quite sync.

Rather a good cartoon seen via Digg which is timely in todays world where privacy rights are reduced to increase state security.

Nicely, it doesn’t make a judgement as to whether that is a good thing or not – simply delivers the message in a simple manner.

Personally, I think it is a bad thing – and excessive to the scale of the threat.

Think about it – how many people do terrorists kill, and then wonder how many people are killed in random murders by “ordinary people” over the same period of time. But which one gets all the attention?

Via Digg