In a very rare twist of events, Aston is actually not child-like optimistic!

Yep, I think it’s only a matter of time as well. Politicians will virtue-signal for PR purposes but I am pretty sure that they are using such surveillance systems for years. F.ex. we had these so-called “100 days of protests” in Bulgaria several years ago and then the cops got busted by journalists that dossiers have been compiled for every single person who attended them, utilizing face-tracking and face-recognition software.

And that’s Bulgaria! One small and – in general – a poor country. Imagine what a mastodon like the UK can afford to do.

I’m still banking on a Utopia (if humanity survives that long, I’m pretty sure it will be attainable). Before we get there we’ll go through these types of more draconian/backwards phases - sometimes they can act as catalysts

The UK used to be the most surveilled country in the world - back then they blamed it on the troubles in Northern Ireland. China probably holds the record now with satellite tech you can spy on pretty much anyone anywhere I guess

I agree that this shouldn’t be a thing… The UK is one of those countries that already has lots of cameras everywhere. You can go a mile down the motorway and there are 4-5 cameras.