At 12:14 AM 6/3/96, Adam Back wrote:

Well, we don't have curfews yet, but they're getting keen on security video cameras lately, the university has a few even, on top of buildings, the steerable variety, and with what I presume are IR spots mounted on them.

Today's newspaper (SJ Mercury News) carried a long article about increasingly ubiquitous video surveillance cameras, and singled out the U.K. as a place that is leading. Apparently even small villages have 50 or more cameras scattered around...men have been arrested for urinating in bushes outside pubs, caught by the infrared pickups (I hadn't thought about the cameras being IR, but this makes sense, as a large fraction of street crimes take place in dark or semidark areas). The article claimed that the cameras and microphones are the latest in surveillance technology, provided by the U.K. defense establishment. Privacy advocates gave comments--they were predictably quite worried. The links with crypto policy are of course apparent. --Winston Smith Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."