Yorkshire to get 35,000 narks

Does this worry you?

The police have just co-opted Yorkshire's 35,000 taxi drivers as informants. Now obviously if you have done nothing wong you have nothing to fear.
But this news comes out on a day in which we learn that Britain has 4.2 million surveillance cameras. Privacy International reports tha tthe UK has the biggest DNA database in the world, and is urging the EU to force all member states to get up to speed.

Yesterday I had a meeting with Jim Harper of the Cato Institute, author of Identity Crisis, possibly the first attempt to undestand the theory of the ne identity state. The story he tells is frightening.

As he says, "A national ID represents a transfer of power from individuals to institutions, and that transfer threatens liberty, enables identity fraud, and subjects people to unwanted surveillance. "