I used to make fun of UK "hoodie law" but then I got bored with it. I took my eye off the ball. Apparently the state spies then took that opportunity to break out the wacko stick and hit everything in sight with it:

Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the neighborhood school, local officials here began a covert surveillance operation. They obtained her telephone billing records. And for more than three weeks in 2008, an officer from the Poole education department secretly followed her, noting on a log the movements of the “female and three children” and the “target vehicle” (that would be Ms. Paton, her daughters and their car).

Whaaaaat? Thankfully Ms. Paton has fought the surveillance even as the kiddlies go merrily to school. But doing so we learn that the the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act gives "474 local governments and 318 agencies" the power to "film people with hidden cameras, trawl through communication traffic data like phone calls and Web site visits and enlist undercover “agents” to pose, for example, as teenagers who want to buy alcohol."

This is so starting that I can;t think of a pithy retort. Think of the staffing required, the tax dollars allocated, the committee meetings that must be held. Think of the watcher passing the watched in the grocery store saying to themselves "I am after you, dog poo leaver, non-recycler..."