"And they're watching Columbo...": Paranoia and Technology

I mentioned a few days ago that I've been scanning a load of old slides and colour-correcting them.

I was joking with James about how much better it would be if we really had technology available like you see in CSI and countless Hollywood movies: "Select the hand... enhance... select the watch... enhance. See? It was 4 minutes to five, which gives him plenty of time to deliver the package, drive across town and commit the murder."

An awful lot of fiction in film and prose depends on a kind of paranoia - that the government have better and more advanced technology than the rest of us. More than this, a lot of what makes us all obey the law depends on us believing in technology that is better than the one we know. Before they started telling us that they had a computer database with a record of everyone who doesn't have a TV licence, the TV licensing authorities liked to tell us about their Detector Vans, which would drive round your neighbourhood and could tell when you were watching TV, and even what channel.

Could they really do that? I don't think so. Do they really have satellites that can see into your living room? I don't think so. Do they even have a database with a record of every address in the UK? Maybe. But is it accurate? Not a chance. And is it effective? Not a chance.

The thing that I think we should all be afraid of is that our government, far from having technology that is better than ours, actually has technology that is worse. There are no James Bond type spies with exploding digital watches, no satellites peering into people's homes, no jaw-droppingly advanced gadgets. Consider the following:

1. They can't find 0sama B1n L@den, even though they've been looking.
2. Security camera footage of terrorists is exactly as crap as the security camera footage in your office
3. S@ddam Husse1n was hiding in a hole when they found him. If anyone could afford and make use of the latest technology to effect an escape, it was him, and...
4. If this super technology existed, someone would have leaked/sold it into private hands by now and it would have been used for evil and/or personal gain.
5. The only person I know who has been hassled by the TV licensing people is the one person I know who most definitely did not have a TV at the time.
6. Unfortunately, you can't zoom in on a fuzzy scan and click "enhance" and suddenly see everything more clearly.

The sad thing about this is that they know how crap their technology is, but they still believe all the marketing twaddle they're being fed (because they don't know any better) and will still insist on foisting white elephant IT projects on us, and seem to think that biometric passports, as in the forthcoming "Identity Card Fiasco", will work.