* Posts by tomgodber

1 publicly visible post • joined 15 Jun 2015

Cops turn Download Festival into an ORWELLIAN SPY PARADISE

tomgodber

Might be worth getting out more

Having just come back from the festival, I can say that the RFID payments worked very well for precisely no meaningful loss of privacy. They will have learnt that Download goers - who are not especially hippy like, except in their inability to wash when at festivals - frequently purchase beer, jagerbombs and low quality meat products within a pretty confined area from a limited selection of vendors. This is not news to anyone who ever attends festivals, and it was a damn sight more convenient than screwing round with beer tokens last year.

Didn't see any evidence of cameras - maybe they were using the feed from the cameras by the stages. If Gene Simmons has any outstanding warrants, they'll have been picking up a lot of false positives on Sunday.

Also worth noting that I didn't see any evidence of crime - a couple of people looked like they may have partaken in some substances, but there were no fights or muggings I witnessed, and I didn't hear any reports of slashed tents, pickpocketing or theft - metal fans tend to be fairly pleasant people, but the festival scene has also changed a lot since the 90s when that tended to be pretty frequent.