U.K. Authorities Watch "Minority Report" A Little Too Much

I'm not the biggest fan of Tom Cruise these days, but his "Minority Report" was an interesting film that looked into the future of how society interacts with technology. Eye scanners, touch screens and all sorts of machinery that is currently on the border of reality and science fiction were portrayed to show a highly organized spatiality where the police could arrest and have someone convicted for merely thinking of committing a crime.

Now the idea of prosecuting thought crimes is much farther down the scale towards science fiction, but facial recognition technology is being rapidly pursued. The problem is that the U.K. is a little too "big brother" hungry to install the equipment to handle that.

From The Guardian:

Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.

But there is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. To ensure no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through, the technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives" - innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.[...]

Phil Booth of the No2Id Campaign said: "Someone is extremely optimistic. The technology is just not there. The last time I spoke to anyone in the facial recognition field they said the best systems were only operating at about a 40% success rate in a real time situation. I am flabbergasted they consider doing this at a time when there are so many measures making it difficult for passengers."

The article also points out that similar technology employed at this year's Super Bowl was turned off because it couldn't deal with the amount of people. After thinking about the technological realities of 2008, there is also the moral issues of this. What happens once we start using biometrics on a large scale? Like in "Minority Report," could advertisers at the Gap scan our eyes and personally tell us about the latest styles and how something new compares to another item we bought previously? It may sound trivial, but that intrusion into our privacy is a serious issue that the authorities in the U.K. do not seem to care about....and I don't have much more faith in the TSA here in America either.

The Inconvenient Truth About Gore's British Challenge

Rob Marciano and conservative global warming skeptics from here to the U.K. rejoiced at a judge's ruling that required schools to warn viewers that the film has "inaccuracies." Well just as Woodward and Bernstein were told to follow the money when investigating Watergate, so should we in this case. It turns out that the money trail has a lot to do with the "little guy" that brought the case to trial.

From The Guardian:

The school governor who challenged the screening of Al Gore's climate change documentary in secondary schools was funded by a Scottish quarrying magnate who established a controversial lobbying group to attack environmentalists' claims about global warming.

Stewart Dimmock's high-profile fight to ban the film being shown in schools was depicted as a David and Goliath battle, with the Kent school governor taking on the state by arguing that the government was 'brainwashing' pupils.

(snip)

The Observer has established that Dimmock's case was supported by a powerful network of business interests with close links to the fuel and mining lobbies. He was also supported by a Conservative councillor in Hampshire, Derek Tipp.

Dimmock credited the little-known New Party with supporting him in the test case but did not elaborate on its involvement. The obscure Scotland-based party calls itself 'centre right' and campaigns for lower taxes and expanding nuclear power.

Well isn't that interesting? Stewart Dimmock may be a concerned parent, but the most concerning thing is where the money came from to fund the trial. Kudos to the Guardian and Observer for doing their due diligence.

Lovely Ol' London

Even though Paris was my favorite, London was a fantastic city to visit. It was quite an expensive place (more so than Paris) but a fun city to see, with so much history intertwined into a modern high-pace metropolis.



The House of Parliament in the background, where Members get to boo and yell at the Prime Minister for saying stupid shit....if only Congress could do that to Bush, instead they cheer for the buffoon.


Welcome to one of two cities that use congestion pricing to limit the amount of cars and pollution in order to improve mass transit. Will NYC be the third?


Despite the song, it is still standing strong.


Inside Hyde Park.


How to say "Exit" in English. I found it at Gatwick Int'l on Saturday....their airport security is even more ridiculous than it is state-side.

U.K. Follows Pentagon's Censorship Of Soldiers

Tony Blair Resigns, Takes Iraq Legacy With Him

Tony Blair announced today that he will be resigning as Prime Minister effective June 27th. The Labour Party, Britain and most of the world is truly grateful to see him go. Although his domestic policies have fared well, he will be most remembered for being Bush's faithful dog, following recklessly into the chaos that is Iraq. This move may indeed save the Labour Party in their upcoming elections, but we will see if it can get the U.K. out of the war any faster.

From the AP:

Blair announced his departure date two days after the formation of Northern Ireland's full power-sharing administration, a goal he spent much of his premiership striving to achieve.

But despite his accomplishments, Blair's legacy looks to be dominated by Iraq.

His decision to stand should-to-shoulder with President Bush by committing troops for the invasion divided his party and the country. Blair said he was content for history to judge him, but four years on and with almost 150 British troops dead in Iraq, the war is more unpopular than ever.

Blair got a decent farewell from party supporters , due to his leadership on the domestic front. Blair did a great many things for the less fortunate of Britons and of course that cannot be forgotten. However, with most politicians, they are generally remembered for one memorable policy in addition to their tact and character. Along with his famous grin, he will go down as a stooge of the Bush Administration, enabling the deaths of 150 British soldiers and giving Bush a solid ally for the occupation of Iraq for which Bush could lean on when he touted international support.

Monty Python Strikes Back

The satirical wit of Terry Jones is beyond compare. If you aren't a fan of Monty Python, you should definitely check it out because it is not to be missed. However there is a serious side to the creator of Monty Python and he took the U.S. and the U.K to task over the treatment of prisoners by the two countries in an Op Ed today.

From The Guardian:

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.

So the commentary cannot be done without humor, we are talking about Terry Jones after all. Like all comedians out there, the amount of material that is made available to make light of is almost insurmountable. Of course I'd rather laugh at something meaningless like Will Ferrell's "Blades of Glory" than the torture of captives held by Britain and the United States. I definitely recommend that movie if you are looking to have your mind numbed from all of our governments' insanity for an hour and a half.

United States Attacks United Kingdom

The United States and the U.K. may have stopped physically fighting each other after the War of 1812 (and small naval skirmishes for the history buffs out there) but an attack against the Brits is still on-going. Instead of a battle of guns, this is a battle of ozone.

The United States has been 'launching' an ozone assault for some time now. Due to the Bush Adminstration's lack of concern over the environment and the increasing threat of Global Warming there have been many dire consequences. This post details how U.S. production of ozone has hurt the United Kingdom.



The good ozone has been beaten back by global warming, most notably seen in the increasing hole over Antartica. Yet the bad ozone in the picture does not simply sit over each particular city. Earlier studies have hinted that bad ozone can be carried by the jet stream and in this case from the United States to Europe but now it is a fact.



Therefore ozone produced in U.S. cities has increased U.K. cases of respiratory illness and it has been attributed to approximately eight hundred deaths in the European heat wave of 2003 alone. Those are not insignificant numbers we are talking about!

From the Times-U.K.:

The study, by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), suggests that up to 2,000 tons of ozone, originating in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and New York, are hitting Britain each day.

The American ozone usually boosts British levels by 20%-30%, sometimes rising to 40%, often pushing them beyond the safe limit of 50 parts per billion (ppb) set by the World Health Organisation.
.....
Scientists blame it for up to 800 of the 2,000 extra deaths caused by the 2003 heatwave, when ozone levels in Britain soared to more than 90ppb.

Of course the majority of the ozone particles that affect people come from the area they reside in, yet 20-30 percent increases are not to be taken lightly. The British government has done much to curb their own pollutants but the U.S. government hasn't done much at all.

Successive British governments have tried in vain to cut levels and the Nerc study sought to find the reason. “Our research shows British pollution control measures are not working because a lot of this pollution is coming from America,” said Alastair Lewis, professor of atmospheric chemistry at York University.

The article also notes that the NERC study to be released this week finds fifteen U.S. cities that contribute to the U.K.'s problems. These cities also emit 1,000 tons of carbon monoxide that travel to the United Kingdom. Due to the results, this shatters conventional wisdom that carbon monoxide and ground level ozone do not travel long distances. The findings will be published this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

See images of the pollutant travel here.