That ‘dripping’ is the sound of the steady erosion of privacy and individual freedom as the UK descends still further into the realms of Big Brother and the advent of the Police State.
Bizarrely, to me at least, it’s a Labour government that is currently creating a Data Communications Bill to be presented as part of the Queen’s Speech come November.
In practice the government will oversee a massive database that will examine and store *all* SMS and email messages sent in, from, through the UK each year. The stats reported are that around 3 billion emails are sent each day and around 60 billion text messages set per year.
Yet again, as with the ID cards scheme, the emphasis is on the prevention of terrorism and maintenance of public order. On the surface this is all well and good, and a perfect justification for such a massive incursion into a citizens private life, well it might be when a benevolent government is on power, but what happens if the databases are put to the wrong use? Who will protect civil liberties if all the rights to those liberties, so hard fought for and won, have been silently destroyed in the name of expediency?
The old adage “An Englishman’s home is his castle” is becoming a hollow joke.
It’s bad enough that there is already a requirement for companies to hold on to the records themselves for twelve months. To have to pass them on to the ‘government’ is going too far by a long way.
The UK is drifting slowly into a Big Brother scenario day by day and personal freedoms are being eroded one drip at a time….
… drip, drip, drip.
The Eclectic Interweb 