I was talking to someone on IRC earlier who was advocating that the government should be Big Brother, it should spy and essentially know everything its citizens are doing at any time. Even to the point of tagging everyone and monitoring their location at all times. I more than suspect they were trolling but it reminded me of this Slashdot thread from a while ago that has some great commentry on where we are now and where things could be going.

“This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter, something like this butane lighter. The self-scanner at Kroger’s locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous fruit. My video games spy on me, reporting the applications I run, the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP is being strong-armed into a two-year archive of each action I take online under the guise of catching pedophiles, the companies I trust to free information are my enemies, the people looking out for me are being watched. As if that weren’t enough, my own computer spies on me daily, my bank has been compromised, my phone is tapped–has been for years–and my phone company is A-OK with it. What’s a guy that doesn’t even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?”

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