Wednesday 4 April 2012

Big Brother might just watch you


To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone — to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!

These are the words with which Winston Smith opens his journal in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. I begin to worry that at some time in the near future I may have to open my own secret channel of communication, because our benighted government is proposing to monitor the email and phone calls of all private citizens.

It’s a Frankenstein Monster the previous Labour government unsuccessfully tried to electrify into life six years ago. Now it has been brought out of the crypt. David Davis, the soul of the Conservative Party, at least has the wit to see what Prime Minister David Cameron cannot: this is going to cause a huge amount of resentment. The idea of it, the idea that we will be subject to levels of state intrusion more common in places like Iran or China, simply makes my blood boil.

Although the new proposals, to be introduced in the next session of Parliament, do not include a national database, something the Labour government was keen on, internet service providers will be required to record all online activity, to be accessed on demand. It would be a dream for the likes of G Gordon Liddy and all such petty snoopers. Hey, there is no need to burgle Watergate; we have all the information we want at our electronic fingertips!

This comes, I should add, in the face of a previous promise by our benighted Coalition government to end the storage of internet and email records without good reason. So why the reversal, why this descent into super snooping? It’s a way, goes the official line, of combating terrorist and paedophile networks. In other words, it makes potential terrorists and paedophiles of us all.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, a civil rights group, reminds us that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were active in their opposition to Labour’s 2006 proposals. “There is an element of whoever you vote for the empire strikes back”, she said. “This is more ambitious than anything that’s gone before. It’s a pretty drastic step in a democracy.”

Not only that but it seems to me to be particularly stupid blunt instrument, and I imagine a massively expensive one. Crime and terrorism need to be fought but in a targeted fashion, not by this kind of idiotic mass surveillance. My confidence in this wretched government diminishes by the day, Conservatives who are not conservatives, Liberals who are anything but liberal.

I do not suppose for a moment that Big Brother seriously wants to monitor Ana’s emails or phone calls, but the very idea that he might is deplorable. We will simply never know if we are being watched or not. Our freedom, once again, will be diminished, our ancient liberties further undermined. The terrorists who seek to destroy our civic tradition must be delighted. Their work is being done for them by stupid politicians and power mad bureaucrats.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head.


Postscript

I wrote this last night in a passion. The latest information I have is that the U has been turned; that the absurd Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has been hoist with her own petard; that Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has said that the legislation will only be published as a ‘draft’, which means it will be ignored as daft. My goodness, how true it is: those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make ridiculous!

24 comments:

  1. Behind this is ACTA and SOPA, and behind that is Bilderberg. In my own neck of the woods, a vast new NSA monitoring and analysis center is being built in UTAH:

    http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

    What can justify such a level of government paranoia? Nothing we have been told of, so far. Whatever is being planned for our future, such preparations would suggest that we are not expected to like it.

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    1. Hmmm, I wonder if government of the people, by the people, for the people really is perishing from the earth.

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  2. This has been in progress for some time now, world wide communications are monitored constantly and trigger words and phrases warrant further investigation. There is a web of video camera surveillance with facial recognition software. The satellite and areal drone technology can read a postage stamp from earth orbit. the Oceans are mapped and have a sonar detection system for keeping track of ship and sub positions. In the US the NSA covers most of these functions.

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    1. This is so true. We now have video cameras here in just about every city centre.

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  3. My guess Ana is that these plans were leaked into the public domain to test the water as it were. If there was no resistance to these Orwellian plans I very much doubt whether what you have written of here would now be a draft; it would be a plan waiting for the green light. You are right to say that the Conservatives are no longer Conservatives.

    Perhaps this is because UKIP now represent personal liberty, sovereignty and, good old British patriotism.

    Conservatives today are as dull as dishwater if they cannot see what is happening to their country.

    At almost every politically correct level tradition and common sense are being swept away and sacrificed upon the dual altars of Multiculturalism and the EU.

    Anyway, well said Ana.

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    1. Nobby, I have a feeling that this will resurface in time to come. As Calvin suggests, it's part of a global pattern. We are becoming Airstrip One.

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  4. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book that I almost know by heart. I've read it more than a dozen times and it still feels like I should read it again. God bless Eric Arthur Blair for giving us this forewarning, for the dangers he envisioned seem to come closer every day.

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  5. All this wriggling and jiggling comes about because the political-media class in this country will not face up to the question. How do we regain control of our borders? Just create an over arching law that says foreign nationals need the permission of the Home Secretary to enter this country. Permission refused or withdrawn and Bobs your uncle!

    However, this depends on a political-media class having some common sense. So we are stuffed.........

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    1. Damned when we do; damned when we don't...just damned!

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  6. Ana your post is a salutory report of the evident paranoia of a government caught in its own surveillance trap. U turns aside I think this illustrates them in stark political caricature.

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  7. EFF has info. on yet another spy bill:

    https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8444

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  8. I remain completely unimpressed.
    And I note the intention to establish an EU cybercrime centre.
    Probably at GCHQ Cheltenham.
    It'll all come to pass, and be blamed on the EU, as they all are.
    Since our "elected" reps are told what to do by the EU.

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  9. Well.....

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TyuSvEFgd1U/T4Co6tBZUvI/AAAAAAAAV4U/pDyuLHYiVDY/s1600/Booker+GCHQ.jpg

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    1. A first class article by a first class writer.

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  10. I don't know anyone living who knows how to defeat this great evil.

    They already have total material control by way of computers, refrigerators and dishwashers equipped to spy on us in our own homes.

    They also have technology that can spy on us through walls.

    They can shut down our blogs via the internet, shut down the internet and shut down our bank accounts.

    They recently claimed all water and minerals and setting up these evil plans globally while eliminating any protest.

    The plan is to keep us homeless, scared, running, cold and hungry without a 'pot to piss' in but there's one they fear and I will be fighting in his army.

    Death or Victory.

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  11. Personally, I think this is the best comment written about Mr Clegg:

    http://newsthump.com/2012/04/04/nick-clegg-pledges-to-oppose-some-government-plans-right-up-until-the-local-elections-are-over/

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    1. Johnm, what a weasel! Sorry I missed this before.

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  12. She couldn't get Abu Hamza deported, she failed miserably at controlling and monitoring immigrants walking into this country and then there is this, what a pea-brain! Headline in The Sun the other day was 'Must try harder to kick out Qatada'.

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