I’ve mentioned before that the UK is the most watched-over nation in the world, with something like one camera for every fourteen people. So it comes as a refief to me to hear a voice of sanity from a group of researchers warning the UK government that the feeds from surveillance cameras need to made publicly accessible in order for us to avoid becoming the Britain that George Orwell warned us about. This is especially interesting in that it chimes with the basic premise of an intriguing non-fiction book called The Transparent Society by David Brin, a name that should be familiar to science fiction readers.