More here

This sounds very interesting but at the same time, it sounds like Big Brother all over again!

Isn't that spying? And an invasion of privacy? Sounds like badphorm should do something about this too!

What do you mean all over again, Bliar, Bottler Brown et al and all of this wretched government have been spying on us ever since they seized office. They've done everything possible to spy on us and collect meaningless data so that the bean counters at Whitehall have something to do instead of getting a proper job. When they're not busy sticking their snouts in the trough to claim ever more ludicrous expenses and perks, MP's are quite happy to come up with ever more harebrained schemes to allow public (and private) bodies access to all this personal information with minimum due diligency. Interfering councils, bin police, snooping house inspectors, nosy goverment busy bodies wanting to know how much you earn, bus lane fines, speed camera's galore and more CCTV than anywhere else in the world, the level of surveillance is shockingly high. It's now impossible to walk from one end of Oxford Street to another without getting captured at least several times on camera and it's barely a mile long.

There is a more sinister reason behind all of this, data is a valuable commodity in the information age and McBean cannot bear the thought of not knowing everything about everyone. The owner of all this vast collection of data would be able to manipulate it to meet their objectives and use as propaganda. Orwell got it right more than 60 years ago and this is just the beginning.

The Home Office routinely uses mobile records to track people so it's nothing new. And all these location based services are just providing another method of plugging in a backend system to extend the level of survelliance. If anything, one could say that mobiles have made it much easier to track individuals.

And lets not forget, with this brainless, tinpot government's record on data protection, you've got more chance of keeping your personal data private by sticking it in a Winzip file and uploading it to Rapidshare!

It was 60 years ago this year

Ah ok, I thought he wrote it in '47 or something

1984 was so called because he reversed the digits of the year he wrote it in 1948

I'm full of useless info

Woah...being tracked?! Yup, Big Brother just doing what he does. Doesn't surprise me.

Apart from the airport eye scanner things, I reckon you have it better over in the US, it's a much bigger place which more opportunities to hide plus you can shoot trespassers and get away with it whereas we have snoopy councils here who think it's their right to know everything about you and can force their way into your home