From: "Mark" 

There's plenty of research going on here, I'd bet, beyond a shadow of
doubt, that we'll be ahead of them in any significant breakthroughs.


"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:454973ac$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> Ah - But Britain with their stem cell research will have a plethora of
> artificial livers by then. All the neocons from the US will flock to
> Britain for new organs while still denouncing stem cell research/cloning
> as evil.
>
>
> "Mark"  wrote in message
news:454967bb$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>> "* Shoppers being scanned as they enter stores. This will be
matched with
>> loyalty card data to affect how they are handled, with big spenders given
>> preferential treatment over others."
>>
>> I'm surprised they didn't mention the natural corollary to that, the
>> matching of how many pub trips, now that you have to provide prints to
>> have a pint, to determine where you fall on the liver transplant list, if
>> they let you on it at all...
>>
>>
>>
>> "Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
>> news:454965db$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>>
>>> http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1948209.ece
>>>
>>> Britain has sleepwalked into becoming a surveillance society that
>>> increasingly intrudes into our private lives and impacts on everyday
>>> activities, the head of the information watchdog warns.
>>>
>>> New technology and "invisible" techniques are being
used to gather a
>>> growing amount of information about UK citizens. The level of
>>> surveillance will grow even further in the next 10 years, which could
>>> result in a growing number of people being discriminated against and
>>> excluded from society, says a report by the Information Commissioner,
>>> Richard Thomas.
>>>
>>> ..
>>>
>>> Mr Thomas,who heads an independent body that promotes public access to
>>> official information, calls for a debate on what level of surveillance
>>> is acceptable.
>>>
>>> He said: "Two years ago I warned that we were in danger
of sleepwalking
>>> into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up
>>> to a surveillance society that is already all around us.
>>>
>>> ..
>>>
>>> Britain under surveillance
>>>
>>> * The national DNA database holds profiles on about 3.5 million people.
>>>
>>> * There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain: one for
>>> every 14 people.
>>>
>>> * More than half of the UK population posseses a loyalty card issued by
>>> the firm that operates the Nectar scheme.
>>>
>>> * Since 2002 there have been more than 8 million criminal records checks
>>> for jobs, of which around 400,000 contained convictions or police
>>> intelligence information.
>>>
>>> * There are plans to expand capacity to read vehicle number plates from
>>> 35 million reads per day to 50 million by 2008.
>>>
>>> * Some 216 catalogue companies in the UK are signed up to the Abacus
>>> data-sharing consortium, with information on 26 million individuals.
>>>
>>> * The database of fingerprints contains nearly 6 million sets of prints.
>>>
>>> * An individual can be captured on more than 300 cameras each day.
>>>
>>> * By the end of 2002 law enforcement bodies had made more than 400,000
>>> requests for data from mobile network operators.
>>>
>>> * The number of motorists caught by speed cameras rose from 300,000 in
>>> 1996 to over 2 million in 2004.
>>>
>>> * In the year to April 2005 some 631 adults and 5,751 juveniles were
>>> electronically tagged.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

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