Big Brother Watch

There have been 2 stories in the last week or so that caught my eye, and made me wonder how long it will be until the US Department of Defense becomes the ‘Ministry of Peace’

The first involves Amazons Kindle ebook reader. Basically, customers bought a copy of a book, it turned out the ebook publisher didn’t have the rights, so Amazon remotely deleted all copies from those who had purchased it. The book, unbelievably, was George Orwell’s ’1984′. Seriously, you could not make this stuff up.

The second is truly astonishing. It involves the UK government, £400 million, and installing CCTV in peoples homes. These will be monitored to make sure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals. In a story that goes beyond bizarre the only objection to these from the opposition benches is that the proposals are ‘much too little, much too late’.