http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2494230.ece

We spend all this time focusing on Bush, what about this crazy shit.

This has been going on for years, nobody gives two shits...

I think we've always assumed the government is too stupid to actually make any of this stuff work properly :-)

I've followed the cameras and id cards in Britain, didn't know they now have microphones and its already well established in the Netherlands.

US is going this way as well. We don't even have doctor-patient confidentiality anymore. Doctors are required by law to make their records available in national databases that can be browsed by just about any curious federal employee, or hacked into by anyone else.

IMO, there is a huge gap between allowing random people to read my medical records or emails and allowing people to watch me walk down a public street on a video camera or hear what I say in public.

One is most certainly Orwellian, and the other is most certainly not.

I'm not too worried about these so called infringements upon my civil liberties, since they are mostly monitoring me in areas where I have zero expectation of privacy.

Let the lamp posts listen to my conversations on the street. Just don't read my email.

Why shouldn't you have an expectation of privacy sitting on a bench talking to your friend with no one else around?

You must also support then everyone being required to wear microphones and tracking anklets at all times when not in their houses, it's the same concept you're promoting.