Ranting to /dev/null

Unintended bonuses

The fact that London is pretty much completely covered by CCTV and now "Congestion" cams is well known. The former are there as a general purpose crime-prevention and forensic tool, the latter are there to assess the fees imposed for simply diving around London, and are capable of recording license plate numbers from passing cars 24 hours a day.

Lots of civil liberties types don't like this. But because of the cameras, authorities are going to be able to trace the route that yesterday's defused car bombs used to reach their targets. This will be an invaluable lead on finding the bastards who tried this.

Two other tangentally related observations:

1) The Metropolitan Police don't usually carry guns. If you see a police officer walking down the street, he usually isn't armed. But the ones that do carry guns carry big ones, fully-automatic assault rifles. These aren't particularly common, but you will see them around sensitive government sites like Downing St. and Parliament Square.

2) As the UK, like almost all of Europe, has abolished the death penalty, there doesn't seem to be an adequate punishment for the people who did this. Oh well.