"[Government] Ministers were last night accused of preparing a cloak-and-dagger operation to record the DNA of every British citizen after claiming there is a 'real logic and cohesion' to the hugely controversial idea," The Evening Standard reported on September 5. "Critics described yesterday's developments as 'chilling,' and another lurch towards a 'Big Brother surveillance state.'"
But Big Brother is already lording over our friends across the Atlantic. Case in point? "Earlier this year it was reported that the London borough of Haringey had used a spy plane to record residents' energy use patterns," the awesome BldgBlog reports:
Thermal images of homes have been taken by a light aircraft fitted with military spy technology to record the heat escaping from people’s houses. Maps identifying individual homes have now been placed on the internet to encourage occupiers to reduce their wastage and carbon emissions by fitting insulation and turning the thermostat down.
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An aircraft, fitted with a military-style thermal imager, flew over the borough 17 times to take pictures of almost every house in the area. Footage of heat loss was converted into stills, then laid over a map of the area, before each house was given colour-coded ratings. Homes that were losing the most heat were represented as bright red on the map. The least wasteful households were shown in deep blue. Shades of paler blues and reds were used to show grades of heat loss.
The Haringey heat map is now available online.
Creepy.
