CCTV out of control  

Today's revelation that the police in the UK, with the connivance of the Home Office, are planning to launch spy drones over Britain for covert surveillance from the sky is only the latest, but perhaps the most far-reaching, measure yet of the Government's obsessive drive for all-round comprehensive spying on its citizens. According to its authors, Kent police and BAE, civilian UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) would "greatly extend" the Government's surveillance and "revolutionise policing". That must be the under-statement of the year. This is pure Orwell. We are told that these spies in the sky could operate from 20,000ft (two-thirds as high as Mt. Everest) and would thus be invisible from the ground, and be in continuous operation for 15 hours at a time. This is so all-embracing, like a permanent unsleeping eye watching you ceaselessly, that it can only be described...