Found this article on WIRED.com...

"As an ex-Brit, I’m well aware of the authorities’ love of surveillance and snooping, but even I, a pessimistic cynic, am amazed by the governments latest plan: to install Orwell’s telescreens in 20,000 homes."

£400 million ($668 million) will be spend on installing and monitoring CCTV cameras in the homes of private citizens. Why? To make sure the kids are doing their homework, going to bed early and eating their vegetables. The scheme has, astonishingly, already been running in 2,000 family homes. The government’s “children’s secretary” Ed Balls is behind the plan, which is aimed at problem, antisocial families. The idea is that, if a child has a more stable home life, he or she will be less likely to stray into crime and drugs."

I do understand that citizens in the UK are not born with the rights as we are in America, and our liberty is far more secure than theirs is.  This is distrurbing becuase we are all lead to believe that our greatest ally is alot like us, when in fact this just goes to show how off base our greatest ally is. 

The rationale of government survaliance in order to produce better children, is beyond my understanding as a liberty loving American.

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/britain-to-put-cctv-cameras-inside-private-homes/

Glenn Beck yesterday on his program mention a little interesting note about this CARS system that would have any Liberty minded person up in arms.  As a dealer principle, or the primary person who inputs all of the information into the CARS system, the system which dealerships use to process the trade-ins, the below warning is displayed.

"This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. Government. Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign."

Source: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/28815/

This is completely unconstitutional.  That our government would even stoop to this level of verbage for those who must use the CARS system, is beyond reason.  Furthermore, do the dealers even have a choice?  Is it reasonable to ask them to decline that privacy warning, and NOT accept a consumers trade in?  Would the consumer shop there? 

In essence, the government institutes a hand out program for consumers, and then forces dealerships to hand over all access, and privacy of all content on their computer in order to take advantage of the American Tax Payer handout for those who can afford a new car. 

Even at a lower cost, do we really need to be bailing out those who can afford a new car right now? Who does this program truely help?  The only thing this does is temporarily support car dealerships as long as government is willing to hand over cash, and subsides the cost of a car.  Will it last forever?  What happens once the cash for clunkers funding is over?