Opinion | A sinister twist in surveillance technology has loaded the dice

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was about 15 years old and had accompanied a friend to a fair at a girls’ school. All the proceeds from the fair were earmarked for charity. Apart from the usual tuck shops, there was a long line of stalls offering various games that people could try their hand at and hope to win a prize. These included innocuous point and shoot or dart games where one paid a certain amount to have three chances at nailing a moving balloon. The prize was usually a coupon to spend more at the tuck shops. In some cases, it was a choice from an array of toys on a shelf put up behind the moving balloon by the stall’s operator.

Some of the stalls were very different, however. They involved games of chance, usually with a deck of cards. Each stall’s operator was a skilled card sharp. My friend, also aged 15, was drawn irresistibly to these. The stakes were very small, just a few coins, but he was hooked. After a few minutes of trying his hand at these, he ran through the small allowance his parents had given him to spend at the fair.