London police launched on 25th of February a new advertising campaign. Posters and TV ads are urging Londoners to turn in people who might be taking pictures of CCTV cameras.

"Thousands of people take photos every day.

What if one of them seems odd ?

Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks, taking photos and making notes about security measures like the location of CCTV cameras.If you see someone doing that, we need to know.

Let experienced officers decide what action to take." 

Other posters target households:

"you see hundreds of houses every day. What if one has unusual activities and seems suspicious"

as well as mobile phone users :

"Thousands of people have mobiles. What if someone with several seems suspicious?"

What's going on in London ? Is the Metropolitan police not busy enough ? did they become completely paranoiac ? or do they need some budget increase ?

Where is this so famous British phlegm ?

As a response, many people have already redesigned the posters to point out the absurdity of them. Some samples are available on BoingBoing.

Tags: 2008, advertising, ATT, attack, blog, camera, civil liberties, counterterrorism, CTU, design, february, fon, ia, ict, im, King, lan, launch, location, london, mobile, mobile phone, nomadcom.net, officer, paranoia, PDF, phone, photo, photographers, Photography, picture, police, post, posters, public, security, snitch, suspect, terror, terrorism, uk, USA, user, wp, www, XP

Interesting informations complied by "404 Brain Not Found" regarding the most radioactive story of 2006.

The polonium-210 discovered by Marie Curie in 1898 came back to newpapers frontpage  and to the cocktail list of one of London's famous hotel leading to the death of a former soviet spy who died after having ingested a very small quantity of it.

On "Los Angeles Time" article we discover that : 

• polonium-210 is deadly and undetectable until it's too late.
• a grain of salt quantity is enough to kill someone
• a gram of it may kill up to 50 million people and sicken another 50 million.
• it's a least a million time more toxic than Zyklon B
• 100 grams are produced every year, mainly by Russia

Such tragic event definitively send James Bond and his friends back to school's benches… and bad luck for us, this time it is not a fiction.  

Vodka Polonium, stirred not shaken

Source : 404 Brain Not Found

Tags: 2007, art, blog, event, fiction, HP, ia, ict, im, james bond, lan, list, london, moscow, nomadcom.net, nuclear, Our World, poison, polonium, sco, soviet, space, spy, story, uk, web, wp, www

London based human rights group "Privacy International" launches its second  "Stupid Security Competition".

The "Stupid Security Awards" aim to highlight the absurdities of the security industry as "Security has become the smokescreen for incompetent and robotic managers the world over" according Simon Davies PI's director.

The competition closes on October 31st 2006. The award categories are:

• Most Egregiously Stupid Award
• Most Inexplicably Stupid Award
• Most Annoyingly Stupid Award
• Most Flagrantly Intrusive Award
• Most Stupidly Counter Productive Award

The competition is open to anyone from any country & nominations can be sent to stupidsecurity@privacy.org.

I'll will fly to Europe in few days and hope not to meet any future nominate during my trip.

 

 

Tags: aim, art, award, awards, blog, europe, human, im, industry, International, lan, launch, light, london, nomadcom.net, Our World, pet, privacy, screen, security, space, Travel, world, wp, www, XP