So…let me get my head around this next little chapter in our Governments glorious reign. In no less than a week, we have had pasty tax, a fuel crisis, and now Home Secretary Theresa May wants to introduce new legislation in the Queen’s Speech enabling law-enforcement agencies to snoop on us using facebook, Twitter and on-line gaming forums.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before MI5 enforced the crackdown on that known hotbed of terrorist activity World of Warcraft. According to the Independent today: “Regional police forces, MI5 and GCHQ, the Government's eavesdropping centre, would be given the right to know who speaks to whom "on demand" and in "real time.” Home Office officials said the new law would keep crime-fighting abreast of developments in instant communications – and that a warrant would still be required to view the content of messages.”
Oh, well that’s okay then. It’s just fine, as Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch campaign group described, that this “unprecedented step will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance as in China and Iran.” Because, unlike Rupert Murdoch’s gang of world news gathering miscreants, the Government will have legislation permitting them to hack into your calls, especially if you use Skype.
Perhaps it is because our enemies hate us so much for our freedom, that our government in its infinite wisdom is eroding their reasons for attacking us? Because lets face it, this move to probe into our private lives has nothing at all to do with curtailing threat, and everything to do with controlling citizens.
David Davis, the former Conservative shadow Home Secretary said to the Independent, this law “is not focusing on terrorists or on criminals, it is absolutely everybody. Historically, governments have been kept out of our private lives. They don't need this law to protect us. This is an unnecessary extension of the ability of the state to snoop on ordinary innocent people in vast numbers.”
This is not the first time that they have tried to do this, the “big brother database” was first proposed by former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, but was abandoned after strong opposition in 2009 by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. However, because the Democrats have changed their tune so dramatically, this time those pesky kids could be the reason that they get away with it.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, told Sky News's Dermot Murnaghan "This is more ambitious than anything that has been done before. The Coalition bound itself together in the language of civil liberties. Do they still mean it?"
What was it that Shakespeare said, something about absolute power corrupting absolutely?
A senior adviser to Nick Clegg said to the Independent that he had been “persuaded of the merits of extending the police and security service powers but insisted they would be carefully looking at the detail. The law is not keeping pace with the technology and our national security is being eroded on a daily basis."
Let’s face it, if all it takes to erode our national security is a few amusing animal pictures posted up on facebook, alongside drunken pictures that no one remembers being taken of them, then it is closer to the truth to say the threat is to our national insecurity. Are we actually going to pay “intelligence officers” to sit and monitor every time Jane Brown of Wiltshire updates her status, or if Ali Ayoub of Birmingham has updated to timeline?
A senior industry official of the Internet Service Provider's Association went on record with the Sunday Times to say "The network operators are going to be asked to put probes in the network and they are upset about the idea... it's expensive, it's intrusive to your customers, it's difficult to see it's going to work and it's going to be a nightmare to run legally."
Just stop and think for a moment. Who are they looking for? You are the customers, the citizens and the people that make this, and every, countries population. Without you, the government would have no power, and there are always more of us.
We are the threat. The government does not serve you as it proclaims to; it serves the interests of those who pay for it to usurp your interests, the bankers, and the big business tycoons. Those who have fingers in all of the resourceful pies (and do not mind how hot those pies are, because they are not the ones paying for them) are the ones who really decide the future of your country. Not you. Does this make you angry? It should.
It is your servants who hate you for your freedom.
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