A Real Life Minority Report...

[Human No More]

Like I said, it's easy enough to avoid, you just need to know how... you just have to keep up with what they are doing, and fight it when necessary... At least if they tried that here, I know there would be huge protests.

I think that in the next 10 years there will be a big split in society between people who just accept more and more surveillance and government control and the people who want to live without fear.
An excellent book I'd recommend is Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Like I said, it's easy enough to avoid, you just need to know how...

Thats besides the point. I know how to avoid one or another of the things, but it is not always possible and it requires those who do it to keep up with new developments, meaning the circle of people able to do so is shrinking.
The things worst to avoid is surveillance coupled to useful things. Like cellphones - they can track you, in Germany there was a proposed law to store some of that data also - but with dwindling public phones an increasing dependency on them is evident. Or with public transportation - you'd have to use a car or bike to avoid that. Or with CCTV (video surveillance that covers for example much of the urban UK) - you can avoid biometric facial recognition only by covering your face or by strange makeup. Then of course there are laws against covering your face in public in general (Belgium) or when protesting (Germany). You can destroy the remote (about 10-20m) readable microchip in new Passports, but then you cannot travel to some places.
So - yes, one can do one or two things, but the costs get higher and these days people look at you like you're from the stone age if you say you dont use a cellphone and they'd declare you paranoid if you seriously start covering your face in public to avoid CCTV. And there was already a case of someone beeing placed under suspicion, because he did not have his cellphone with him!

The creepy thing is, that these things happen all under a banner of improvement and safety and seem harmless enough, but have the potential to be used in other ways. Like StudiVZ or Facebook - social networking, people share their secrets and find they are in the net forever and used for commercial purposes.

In Germany we have an increased awareness (or used to have that) for such things. In the third reich, jews first just had to get a passport - no worries about that, right? Ok, then they had to wear a badge - well, thats inconvenient, but does not harm anyone right - and how that was used after that is in the memory of everyone... Seemingly harmless things CAN and WILL be used to other means if the overall system changes.

I think that in the next 10 years there will be a big split in society between people who just accept more and more surveillance and government control and the people who want to live without fear.

That split is already there! Some people I know from the CCC try to raise awareness for the issue, but convenience, fear for the safety and simply regulations make it too easy for people to accept this. Of course people want a cellphone, travel everywhere, go everywhere, use convenient payment methods, have a navigation in the car, use a car, use the internet and so on - the strings attached to these become a web without people beeing even aware of it - or with people beeing aware of it and cherishing it for its possibilities (like a global village, a hive mind, a personal globalization).
Its really a ripoff. People are promised freedom and connectedness, but actually these are the things they will loose in the end.

So: "(true) freedom! not fear"