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Surveillance 2.0

Written by Laur
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Surveillance 2.0

parking-ticket-CCTVThey said CCTV is going to help fighting crime. They just didn’t mention what kind of crime.

The beautiful city of Nice, on the French Riviera, will soon start using its CCTV cameras to issue parking tickets (click on image for the story). That could prove to be a significant source of income for the city hall, especially considering that a lot of it could be automated with license plate recognition and data mining. In fact, the system has the potential to be so efficient that CCTV might soon become short for Cash Cow TeleVision.

The icing on the cake? This system was paid from local taxes. Much like London’s famous surveillance network, which managed to do almost nothing at all to deter crime – defeated, as it were, by that high-tech piece of clothing equipment popularly known as “the hoodie”. How long until Boris Johnson warms up to the idea of turning that public embarrassment into a sizable boost to its coffers? How soon will other cities follow suit? New parking meters in Holland already require that you enter your license plate number to buy parking time. It would be ridiculously easy to couple this data to a CCTV system and mail you a fine the minute your parking expires. I could probably do it in 500 lines of code or less.

Meanwhile, I predict that spray can sales will soon skyrocket in the sunny city of Nice. As well they should. No matter what is said about the French, they do have a talent for civil disobedience.

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The right to vote

Written by Laur
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The right to vote

vote Why am I required to pass a written test, a field test and a medical examination in order to be allowed to drive, but in order to vote the only requirement I should satisfy is being able to breathe?

Seriously. I could be drunk or high while getting in that booth and helping decide who’s going to run the country. Nobody cares. I could be mentally unstable, illiterate or with an IQ of a shoe. I could be an evil overlord. I bet if Lord Vader would show up at the polling station, they’d hand him a card if the photo in his passport would match his breathing mask. Hell, he’d probably be in the run.

The very least you should be required to know before voting is where is your guy positioned in the political spectrum. Wait, let me make this easy. Where does he/she says they’re positioned. Plus maybe their main political ideas on three major topics, like the economy, the social services and the external affairs. People that vote for a party candidate just because it’s a family/tribe/neighbourhood tradition should be turned back from the door. People that vote for that selfsame candidate just because they like their hair should be kicked to the curb – and never allowed to vote again.

And while I’m at it: electronic vote. We wants it. And don’t give me that online security crap either; if investment funds trust a secured Internet connection with millions of dollars’ worth of transaction each and every day, you should be able to get me a secure way to send you 1024 bits of info every four years or so. It even ties up nicely with my earlier proposal; you can just make a nice online questionnaire as a prerequisite to voting.

Make voting easy and make it count. Maybe then politics will stop being such a dirty word.

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On book burnings

Written by Laur
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On book burnings

quranAn evangelical pastor from the great state of Florida has decided to  single-handedly win the war on terror by burning a few exemplars of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, on September the 11th. This is most  probably the opening move of a cunning plan to attract Islamic terrorists to his home town of Gainesville, where they will be promptly set upon by legions of mosquitoes, alligators and retired New Yorkers.

Terry Jones, age 58, further declared that “a burning of the Koran is to call attention that something is wrong”. Contacted for comment, his psychiatrist wholeheartedly agreed, mentioning that it is his hope that with care and therapy he will be able to correct what’s wrong with Mr. Jones.

In a move that is clearly designed to shock and anger Mr. Jones and his congregation, a large number of Muslims has decided to completely ignore the pastor and his fundamentalist plans. A small number of  Muslims from his home state of Florida intend, however, to organize a burning of their own, by setting fire to their cable news subscription. “Burning the Quran is an attack on our God, so we decided to respond in kind”, an anonymous participant declared. It is largely expected that Terry Jones will back down in the face of this latest threat.

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