And, of course, police officers are less than discriminating about who they add to this list. For example, "Catt, 50, and her 84-year-old father, John" were added to the list because a police officer noticed their van at three protest demonstrations. And now Catt and John get pulled over by the police and searched as terrorists.
Environmental activists tend to be pretty forgiving of license-plate cameras, because they're a critical piece of congestion-charge systems that charge people money for driving instead of using public transit. This kind of regressive tax (the £10 charge in London is a pittance and no disincentive to the wealthy, and is crippling to the marginal and the poor) is also much beloved by the law-and-economics crowd, who assume that rational consumers will all be equally disincentivized by a little friction in the system.
But congestion charges require license plate cameras, and license plate cameras are an enormous piece of artillery to hand to the world's police, who are increasingly pants-wettingly afraid of any sort of public protest -- including environmental protests. I support reducing driving as much as the next green, but environmental change will require lots of protest, and that protest will get exponentially harder with the growth of the traffic cameras that are absolutely integral to congestion charge schemes.
Activists repeatedly stopped and searched as police officers 'mark' cars (via Beyond the Beyond)The two anti-war campaigners were not the only law-abiding protesters being monitored on the roads. Officers have been told they can place "markers" against the vehicles of anyone who attends demonstrations using the national ANPR data centre in Hendon, north London, which stores information on car journeys for up to five years.
Senior officers have been instructed to "fully and strategically exploit" the database, which allows police to mark vehicles with potentially useful inform-ation such as drink-driving convictions.
The use of the ANPR database to flag-up vehicles belonging to protesters has resulted in peaceful campaigners being repeatedly stopped and searched.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal Kent and Essex police deployed mobile ANPR "interceptor teams" on roads surrounding the protest against the Kingsnorth power station, in Kent, last year.
(Image: control, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Secret London's photo stream)

The two anti-war campaigners were not the only law-abiding protesters being monitored on the roads. Officers have been told they can place "markers" against the vehicles of anyone who attends demonstrations using the national ANPR data centre in Hendon, north London, which stores information on car journeys for up to five years.
"If my staff has the ability for self-reflection and seeing the big picture, they should ask, 'Why would one of us fuck the rest of us so badly by damaging our ability to make money?" Ponorvosky says. "The first casualties of this will be the people who all of these protesters are 'defending.' No thought is given to 'the trickle-down,' to use Ronald Reagan's favorite expression." As for the people who are vowing to shut Paradou down, Ponorvsky says, "These people have no sense of rightness or goodness."
Designer Michiel Cornelissen laser-sintered stainless-steel crucifix has screwdriver bits cut into each tip, turning it into a screwdriver that repels vampires.
Muji's going to start selling hole-punches that knock out patterns that can be threaded between two Lego bricks. They go on sale in a week, and open up many possibilities for crafty Lego extensions.

I think we have to start thinking about the idea that humans in the last 30, 40, or 50,000 years have been domesticating ourselves. If we're following the bonobo or dog pattern, we're moving toward a form of ourselves with more and more juvenile behavior. And the amazing thing once you start thinking in those terms is that you realize that we're still moving fast. I think that current evidence is that we're in the middle of an evolutionary event in which tooth size is falling, jaw size is falling, brain size is falling, and it's quite reasonable to imagine that we're continuing to tame ourselves. The way it's happening is the way it's probably happened since we became permanently settled in villages, 20 or 30,000 years ago, or before.
Last month, I 
Cake Wrecks has a gallery of horrendous cakes with a Big Bird theme. To be fair, it seems really difficult to decorate a cake to look like Big Bird, what with that long beak of his.
Machineintheghost
Crucifix multi-screwdriver
Mitch
Owner of trendy Manhattan restaurant Paradou plumbs new dept
Engineer_
Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Microwave Lava
mdh
Crucifix multi-screwdriver
mdh
Traffic cameras used to harass and limit movement of peacefu
toolbag
Owner of trendy Manhattan restaurant Paradou plumbs new dept
anwaya
Traffic cameras used to harass and limit movement of peacefu
weatherman
Owner of trendy Manhattan restaurant Paradou plumbs new dept
Monkeybaister
EZ Cracker egg cracker
Dave Rattigan
Seth Godin rants on faux science and irrationality