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Oops - see, it's happening already...

Earlier I wrote about an announcement that the Metropolitan police were to get a real time feed from London's congestion charge cameras, but only if they promise faithfully only to use it in the tracking of "car borne terrorists" (does that include those who support terrorism by selling the odd dodgy DVD do you think?. But it appears there's to be legislation to enable all police forces everywhere to use such a feed from their local cameras for any sort of crime fighting:

'Big Brother' plan for police to use new road cameras | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics:

· Home Office leak reveals clash between ministers
· Millions of motorists could be tracked

Alan Travi, home affairs editor
Wednesday July 18, 2007
The Guardian

"Big Brother" plans to automatically hand the police details of the daily journeys of millions of motorists tracked by road pricing cameras across the country were inadvertently disclosed by the Home Office last night.

Leaked Whitehall background papers reveal that Home Office and transport ministers have clashed over plans for legislation this autumn enabling the police to get automatic "real-time" access to the bulk data from the traffic cameras now going into operation. The Home Office says the police need the data from the cameras, which can read and store every passing numberplate, "for all crime fighting purposes".

Nick Clegg's on the case though:

The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg, said the "unintended act of open government" had revealed the disingenuous attitude of ministers towards public fears about a creeping surveillance state: "No wonder Douglas Alexander was keen to tone down these proposals, since he must know that public resistance to a road charging scheme will go through the roof if it is based on technology which poses a threat to personal privacy. Bit by bit, vast computer databases are being made inter-operable and yet the government seems to running scared of a full and public debate."

Technorati Tags: surveillance state

Ruth Gledhill, in her regular religious spot in the Times blogs touches again on these regulations to outlaw discrimination in the provision of goods and services against people on the basis of their sexual orientation:

Yet more on s*x******:

Sorry folks. It depresses me to have to come back to this subject again as much as I expect is depresses some of you. But I would be remiss in my duty if I ignored it. With the introduction of yet more bureaucratic red tape, or should that be pink tape, under the heading of the Sexual Orientation Regulations, the Government is bending itself into yet more unorthodox contortions in its attempt to do right by this country's minorities. Inevitably, orthodox, Catholic, traditionalist and almost all other Christians save the liberal and most of the Anglican establishment are once more on a crusade against what is perceived as yet another demon of secularisation. The danger they fear is that, once again, in its attempts to appease one particular lobby group, the Government will end by discriminating against another, the religious.

Now some will probably see this as making complete my journey into a reactionary old fuddy-duddy, but I can't get too excited about this. Why are we having such regulations at all? Certainly is respect of private businesses. I can understand and wholeheartedly agree that if any such religious based institution or individual is receiving even a penny of public money to deliver a service that would otherwise be delivered by a public agency then yes, they should not be permitted to discriminate.

But on being refused a hotel room for being gay and wanting to spend the night with my lover? Why on earth would I want to line the pockets of a bigot against his and my will?

But that, I suppose, brings us in particular to education and social services, where religious charities are often involved, and in particular in state funded faith schools where the religious institution concerned tends to pay in a very small proportion of the cost of funding the facility with the tax payer picking up the vast majority of the cost. If these religious institutions can't live with these regulations, they should get out of the business of rent-seeking - getting public money and exerting more than their fair influence over what is done with that money.