Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as
to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery?

Via The view from Wycombe: Big Brother or the Big Society? – Big Brother Watch, I respond to the recent Guerilla stickering in the town:

In the last few days, we have had a round of guerrilla stickering in Wycombe. There was the sticker of the week. Then there was talk of prosecution at the Bucks Free Press. Finally, the sticker returned.

Now, it is a good photograph. As a totem for the surveillance society, it is superb. Perhaps some even find it superficially funny to see all-round “CCTV in operation” signs, a draconian alcohol prohibition, an exhortation not to urinate or defecate in the street and, as if in some final act of absurdity, a restriction on feeding the birds.

But why? Why was it thought necessary to watch, to prohibit and to spell out a requirement of common decency?

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