Notes and Comments: 18/06/2008

NOTES:

A splendid article by Simon Jenkins at The Grauniad showing just why the politicians are right to ignore the way the electorate seem intent on buggering about with the politician’s already decided courses of action.

We all know schemes like the government’s ID card nonsense will not work. Cory Doctorow explains one of the reasons why.

The problem of sifting through vast amounts of data was highlighted by the US 9/11 Commission, which concluded that the American intelligence community knew in advance that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were in the offing, they just didn't know they knew it. The pieces were all there for anyone who knew to look for them, needles buried in a haystack of irrelevancies.

The answer in both America and Britain has been to collect more haystacks: useless, indiscriminately acquired information on

people who've done nothing to arouse suspicion. We even inveigle our citizens to become amateur curtain-twitchers and pecksniffs, demanding that they report "suspicious" activity to the authorities.

COMMENTS:

God-botherers and other people’s sexuality – yet again.

My comment:

I don't really know which is the more ridiculous the whole idea of a god, or the notion that it is any of any one else's business what people (over the age of consent and of their own free will) do with their genitals.