This email went round at work recently, and it has been seen on a few usenet news groups too:

I was talking today to one of my Linux users who happens to manage the IT security for Hampshire Police he’s given me a tip off bout some filming that Hants Police are doing for a television programme series from tomorrow (26th September) for seven weeks.

If you use the M27 or the M3 this potentially affects you so please proceed with caution and pass onto anyone who you feel might just need to know. The program a BBC South commission called “Traffic Cops” will be filmed covering the area from Ringwood concentrating on Ringwood M27
up to M3 J9 and a team working the ringroad around Southampton (Totton will have a unit working it alone), Cosham M27 stretch to J5 of the M27
(Southampton Airport turn-off). The fourth concentration is working from Winchester Services covering M3 to J10 M3 (Winchester South) using five unmarked cars, two Black Skoda 03 registration Octavias, an 05 plate dark red Mondeo and two Volvo saloon cars.

The BBC unit are going to be based out of a unit in Millbrook Road in Southampton and will also be covering the armed police response unit and
the Southampton Airport Police Security / British Transport Police team.

The BBC team are in Citreon Picasso MPVs leased from Arriva.

To make it even more effective the Traffic police have authority from Chief Constable to “work to rule” So instead of the laid back approach
to the usual Hants traffic police this will be a lot more concentrated to make it effective filming.

There’s no source, so no way of knowing how true it is, but a friend called me today after seeing three police cars on the hard shoulder having pulled someone over, two of which had large cameras and microphones recording the action.

The idea that the police will go after more motorists than usual to make the BBC programme look good is particularly sinister. The fact that I’ve rarely seen police pulling people over on the M3 and now my friend sees police everywhere doing so suggests there’s some truth in the notion. Exactly who do the police work for? Who do the BBC work for?

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties, Driving, News at 9:53 PM EDT

2 Comments »

Vanessa Feltz just went way up in my estimation. Defending her Channel 5 show Cosmetic Surgery Live on a Channel 4 programme called The Worlds Most Extreme TV, she had this to say:

I’ve always thought it was pretty disgusting to have some people saying what is appropriate for other people to do. For God’s sake, if an adult decides they want to go on television and have plastic surgery why the hell shouldn’t they? And who on Earth is anybody to dictate to them that it isn’t suitable behaviour?

Good for her.

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 11:26 PM EDT

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Put me down for one of these! It’s a keyboard on which every key “is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment”. You have to look at the pictures to see how cool this is. It’s just graphic art for now, but Art Lebedev assures us that it is in the initial stage of production, and hopes it will be available in 2006.

This link via a comment on a Freedom to Tinker article about acoustic snooping of typed information, which is also very interesting.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Geekism, Links at 7:13 PM EDT

3 Comments »

There’s a lot of whinging going on about Tesco’s success. Friends of the Earth want the UK Competition Commision to investigate, because obviously a 30% market share is tantamount to monopoly. Walmart (who own Asda) are also calling for the government to investigate. Why bother to compete when you can get your buddies in power to bully the competition?

The Forum of Private Businesses, which exists to co-opt government force in its members interests, brands Tesco a “bully-boy” guilty of (shock horror!) “relentless profit making”. Apparently Tesco are “screwing suppliers into the ground”, which just sounds to me like they’re driving a hard bargain. It’s what business is all about, something I’d have though the FPB would understand. Where does the idea that buyers have a responsibility to sellers come from? I shop around and get the best deal when I buy, say, memory for my PC, why should Tesco behave any differently when it comes to groceries?

Independent businesses are suffering, with “41 per cent of shopping centres now described as clone towns where independent shops are in short supply”. But I don’t think this has anything to do with supermarkets. In the USA, with less regulation and more entrepeneurial spirit, I’ve noticed that there are a lot more indepenedent mom & pop stores than in the UK. I think the FPB finally gets close to the truth when it says, “The tax and regulation system materially favours big supermarkets which is utterly absurd and unfair.”

No doubt, given their stance on the Channel Islands’ VAT breaks what they have in mind is more tax and regulation for supermarkets, rather than less government interference in everyone’s business.

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 6:55 PM EDT

4 Comments »

Anti-ID card campaigners NO2ID launched a new viral marketing campaign: a song called The Swizz of the Cards (to the tune of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) made by the same people who brought us the genius Very Model Of A Modern Labour Minister.

Funny animations and letter writing campaigns are of course the stock tools of NO2ID. They certainly aren’t the type of people who go around vandalising things. Which makes the arrest of six of them on their way to a protest — dressed in orange boiler suits with barcodes tattooed to their foreheads — under the trumped up suspicion of “conspiracy to commit criminal damage”, particularly despicable. (Hat tip to ThePresentOccupier for spotting that story.)

It’s a perfect example of how the state can make life difficult for individuals who don’t play along. The last thing we need to give self-interested authoritarians is one more tool to use against us.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 11:00 PM EDT

3 Comments »

The future is here. Well, almost. The first sign was the LCD animated advertising billboards up the escalators at Tottenham Court Road tube station, another hint is ominous audio messages in every public space (just like Blade Runner, see?), and now we are promised the one peice of technology short of flying cars that will really mean the future has arrived: The world’s first rollable display!

Gizmodo sums up the importance of this astonishing development:

We’re getting close to electronic paper here, people. Get your panties in a bunch.

I don’t think it’s quite ePaper, or what Arthur C. Clarke calls a softscreen, but integrate it with flexible electronics and a flexible power source and you’re there. There’ll be robots doing the housework before you know it!

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 8:12 PM EDT

1 Comment »