So - all these snoopers are going to gang together to ensure our every little move is covered and integrated, eh? Nice. And what are they going to do with this data? Could this become a sort-of graphical Phorm?

Ms. Hilton because I'm sure she'd welcome this sort of attention.

On a completely different tack, why does the "Joke Alert" icon generally mean that the posting itself is completely unfunny, or at least lame?

That's the nice thing about the security industry - it's recession proof. When times are tough there are more bad people about, so a greater need to keep tabs on them. When times are good, there's more money and people are insecure about having it nicked by the bad people, so a greater need to keep tabs on them.

Luckily however, no-one is ever actually asked if they want more surveillance, cameras, intrusion, curtailed freedoms. It all just sort of happens. Which is nice for the suppliers as they rarely get held to account, or are questioned. It's very similar to the position with arms dealers - they only *make* the weapons, they don't *use* them - so nothing that happens as a consequence is their fault.

Of course, we're only intruding on "them", and "we" don't do anything wrong, so have nothing to hide.