When I read in the media yesterday about plans by the Government to put in place measures that can track all our activity online and on the phone in real time; I thought great April fool, a little close to the bone perhaps.
Now instead I realise that in fact this is the real deal, the proof that the Coalition is Continuity New Labour. We live in a free society in theory, EU Directives have done their best to smash this up and in some ways the European Court of Human Rights has tried to protect some basic rights. But this bill is nonsense, worse it seems from the text of the EU directive that as usual our Government has sought to gold plate the regulations.
As per usual this is all said to be in the name of catching terrorists and organised crime (apart from random acts of violence what sort of crime is not organised?). However, this comes from the same disastrous type of 'terrorist legisaltion' that led to Councils using powers to snoop on people to see if they lived in school catchment areas. Well, we have these excessive RIPA already, there is no need to extend them further, more over as can be seen from the Telegraph article, they are abused completely by bureaucracy once in place and only used a tiny fraction of the time for the purposes intended:
Imagine, every internet search you did could incriminate you - search for ways to reduce your tax burden and whack, around come the plod accusing you of plotting tax evasion. I support Leeds United, sadly there is hooligan element to the support, being seen looking at websites perhaps I will be linked to that too? Even if its all untrue, mud sticks and the UK Police have earned their reputation for collaborating with reporters in recent years.
How Liberal and Conservative MP's and Peers can ever vote for this nonsense is beyond me; it is not like Orwell's, it is Orwell's 1984.
David Davis is very sound in the package above on this issue - but will he be a lone voice?
I have been trying to find a way of of living in the UK for a while without success, passing laws like this will make me more desperate to protect my basic rights from an authoritarian state.
