It's all very boring, but if all the CCTV and other surveillance deters or catches drunk/drugged drivers who kill, ANPR assisting in County Lines operations, organised crime detection, random rapes and murders, and all the rest of the nasty shit we see and hear on our TVs and in our papers every day, then as someone who is law-abiding and doesn't do nasty shit, I'm generally OK with it 
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At least in this country we're generally aware of what's going on with all this stuff, and there is a good degree of public debate about these matters. Also, pressure groups which force that debate and make us think before any new measures are brought in.
None of us are perfect and many of us break the law to some small degree for our own personal pleasure, or perhaps we just do things we don't want others knowing about. But so long as we're reasonably savvy and don't get involved in the bad stuff, on balance I'm relatively OK with the proliferation of the surveillance society. Taking into account all the above.
The old maxim generally applies: if you're not doing anything wrong, why are you worried? And all the talk about 1994 and the Thought Police is overstated IMO. What we have in this country - in all sorts of ways - is what the general population generally wants, ie not some stifling and over-controlling govt telling us what we need.
Ah ! We are aware of what the media tells us. But even the internet doesn't tell us what brewing in the labs and the minds of the state. Relevance to punting? That its not "what the general population generally wants", but what the general population are encouraged to accept is normal and reasonable. So the XR rebellion are lumped in with terrorism and surveilled to buggery. Technology develops, there's profit to be made.
What would you say to someone who told you that the uk census every ten years is run by the same outfit that organizes the freelance interrogators at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? (and no, its not the CIA). Would you believe them?
