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And good Lord, what a tree it is! Cameras on every streetcorner (in the UK they are literally going to track every vehicle, everywhere it goes, all the time, and store its movements in a database. OCR will "read" the license plate)... coming soon (already experimented with, with mixed results), "facial recognition", so that people can be "tracked" everywhere they go too. Here, in These United States.

There are already cities in the US trying to track people - I've posted a few threads about small towns in Florida tracking who comes in and out of their towns - nobody cared - got a few dozen responses at the most. The Federal Government is encouraging states to work on some kind of GPS tracking for vehicles, and they are being very quiet about it - I believe Oregon and Washington state are two of the areas they are working on it. Ostensibly it's about charging people by how much they use roads or fuel economy or pick your favorite flaky premise, but it will go further and further.

Most Americans don't even realize that the Bush Administration got the National ID they wanted last year, the so-called "REAL ID", that dictates how state IDs should be handled - basically you'll have a National ID, but it'll still be handled by the state.

I don't know if we just have a lot of stupid people in this country that don't pay attention to what's going on, or if most people are so scared that they will allow the government to do anything, or if they just don't care, or if Conservatives are really and truly a dying breed (or a combination of all four).