WEDNESDAY 2 May 2007 will always stick in Professor Max Buttle’s memory.
He was about to leave for a conference in Berlin, but was detained by the arrival of the US secret service. Three debt collectors, a social worker and a court bailiff were also anxious to talk to him.
Orwell’s vision of a Big Brother state that knew everything about everyone had, over the past five years, finally borne fruit. And it was a strange fruit, fertilised largely by computer scientists’ urge to do things the Right Way. At last, they had managed to get government to adopt universal standards that allowed the free exchange…
