The road to hell
This is bad on so many levels:
Spy-in-the-sky cameras are being used to identify householders who are wasting the most energy and to shame them into turning the central heating down.
Thermal images of homes have been taken by a light aircraft fitted with military spy technology to record the heat escaping from people’s houses.
[...]
Officials from the authority shrugged off suggestions of a Big Brother-style invasion of privacy by prying on people’s properties and then publishing the information.
They said that they hoped to use the maps to pinpoint the homes where grants should be offered and to identify empty properties that could be used to lessen the housing shortage.
We are so far from government only role is to protect human rights. So far that it seems OK for government official to abuse one’s right for privacy even when no law was broken…
Tags: Big Brother Human Rights Privacy Libertarianism
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Rogel @ May 5, 2007
Or they might just be comparing the heat emissions to the electricity consumption graphs and checking who’s growing pot in their houses.
What ever they doing the assumption is that they are not breaking the law, isn’t it?
The worse thing here is that nobody claim that somebody break the law, and yet the government taking extreme measures to prevent a legal, although might be less desired, behavior
that is also not particularly smart. As one of the commenters to that article said; so they are flying over 17 times contributing to the global warming? But I do get your point which would be mine; what purpose does shaming do? Other than to create anger and not enlightening people to contribute. Has anyone heard of incentives?
shaming ain’t it!
Ingrid