Blunkett confirms UK satellite snooping plan

THE BRITISH Minister of the Interior, David Blunkett, confirmed to BBC Radio 4 this morning that 5,000 crooks will be tracked by satellites in the sky as part of a "five year plan" to curb crime.

The technology, he told the BBC, is in place to track "prolific criminals" and a pilot scheme will begin this autumn.

Although he was light on technological details, the scheme will apparently be linked to existing electronic tagging schemes.

He told the BBC that the authorities needed to know where these people were. But perhaps the over-liberal minister could go one step beyond with the scheme, and attach pellets to armlets or anklets which will paralyse or even kill the crooks if they venture into places they're forbidden to go.

Further extensions would be to fit RFID technology to all people at birth. Such devices could be linked to our blood stream and instantly analyse whether we were getting over excited about anything at all and loudly tick us off by triggering loudspeakers fitted to every street lamp.

And because the RFID tech would be linked to our credit and ID cards, we could be auto-fined on the spot. µ