h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"We don't care" says the poster of this article. And it seems (s)he's right. First published over ten moths ago, featured twice on the front page and the response from the h2g2 community is absolutley zilch, nix, nothing!
We ought to care. If only because, as the poster points out, the overload on data systems makes the actual data virtually useless because of the (wo)man-hours needed to trawl though it all in order to find anything relevant to a particular crime.
Last night's TV and today's newspapers carried CCTV images of guys who are alleged to have stolen £43m of jewellery from a bond street shop. Have we caught them? Are we likely to? Traditionally such crimes would be solved by tracing the stolen goods when/if they start to appear on the market. My guess is that the same will happen this time and that the CCTV will merely confirm what will already be provable in other ways.
Meanwhile CCTV must capture 10s of thousands of illegal drug deals every week. How many dealers are taken off the streets as a result? I don't know but suspect it's minuscule. Drug crime continues to be all pervasive with gangs making millions from a lucrative international trade which the authorities seem to be powerless to stop.

I think the lack of comments may partly be due to the fact that this was published as a journal entry (where it got some comments) before I found it and asked for permission to publish it here in .
So you see, I found it important enough to publish it here in order to reach more people. I'm sure many people have read it, but unfortunately, most never leave a comment.

Bel