New British Surveillance System Will Root Out Terrorists TV Cheats

I've never understood the British willingness to suffer the TV and radio detector vans to prowling around looking for the possibility that someone is watching the BBC without paying the extortionate license fee. I paid mine when I was there; I remember there being a not-too-significant discount on your television license if you were legally blind. Anyway, they've upped the ante and gone even more high-tech.

The smeller's the feller

You know, the BBC's monopoly could be easily broken forever if everyone would just learn to begin telling nosy inspectors on the doorstep "Sod off, Stalin, it's just my computer monitor."

It's a good reminder that user taxes aren't necessarily all they're cracked up to be. I mean, can you imagine PBS trucks rolling around snooping on people, trying to enforce their monopoly on Sesame Street to anyone who had a TV? Especially in, say, Pushmataha County, Oklahoma?

PBS man: Sir, our vehicle has detected radiation coming from your isolated trailer consistent with an unlicensed television and OH MY GOD WHAT A HUGE SHOTGUN NOOOOOOO!

There is some speculation in the comments at S.Weasel's place that the whole thing is just a big giggle perpetrated on the British people for years, with government approval no less--that these trucks are incapable of detecting anything. Another possibility is that the technology is simply oversold: they're incapable of detecting anything accurately, and so their results are inadmissible in court, and therefore they rely on the gullibility of unlicensed TV watchers to confess when authoritatively confronted.

Of course such technology could never be used on a widespread basis in America. Period.