The inevitable (and naive) question raised when new surveillance technology makes itself available to the public sector, is “Well, what’s the harm—surveillance just makes everyone safer.” And yet, just as inevitably, every time one of these technologies is implemented it turns out that there is some clever way to abuse it that never occurred to anyone. For instance, the cameras being installed at intersections around the country that capture the license plates of cars running red lights; how could a government abuse this simple and seemingly reasonable safety precaution? Well, why shouldn’t a municipality shorten the length of time that the yellow light shows and increase their revenue? Why not, in fact, shorten the interval of the yellow light to a length of time that is against the law and causes more car wrecks? Oh sheep, when will you learn. You cannot trust the government.

Never have the foibles of modern technology been made so obvious than with artist William Lamson’s piece—a carefully placed balloon in front of a CCTV camera. (found via Boingboing)

It’s the longest moment, isn’t?—trying to hold a pose for someone that’s not too quick with the camera?  But what if they are taking the picture—the entire time?  There are many more to laugh at over at buzzfeed.

I could really take a hatchet to this utter whinefest, this gooey-mass-of-over-generalizations of an editorial by Robert Lanham. But I’m just going to say one thing in response to his statement that the Millenials, “[are] always doing stupid shit, but rarely getting called on it.”

Are you ready, Mr. Lanham? Good. George W. Bush. ‘Nuff said.

It looks like some folks in the UK have had enough with the CCTV surveillance. The UK has the highest density of surveillance cameras of any western nation, with 1 for every 14 people. And there are special ones just to catch you speeding with the cute colloquial nomenclature of gatso. So, Motorists Against Detection (MAD) is having at it and taking the gatsos out—in some cases even resorting to dynamite.