This year’s Privacy International survey put Britain bottom of the European
league for surveillance and civil intrusion. In his last column for the Sunday Times, Simon Jenkins urges us all to fight to defend freedom against government encroachment:
Never was the adage of Louis Brandeis, the US justice, more relevant: free men
are naturally alert to the wiles of evil-minded rulers but “the greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding”.
Now the government wants to create a giant database that would store the details of every phone call, text message, and webpage visited by everyone in Britain: Big Brother will be watching every move you make.
[Home Secretary Jacqui] Smith parrots the totalitarian’s answer that “the innocent have nothing to
fear”. But they do. They know from experience that government cannot be
trusted with private information. In addition, any errors in that
information are almost impossible to correct.
Read the full article here
The news that the government now wants to track our mobile phone calls, texts, emails and internet browsing habits has got me enraged. For the past 11 years, this government has sought more and more control over its citizens, from installing 4.2m CCTV cameras, to the suggestion that we must respond to more and more intrusive questions when they complete the next census. It has simply got to stop.
On this occasion, I have done something about it, in my own small way. I have written an article outlining what the government is seeking to do and my views. But, I have also produced a ‘draft’ letter that can be personalised and sent to local MP’s. I am urging other likeminded people to reproduce the article, to include their own comments, after all, not everyone will agree with all my comments and then publicise it. Maybe we can start a programme where people start to bombard their MP’s with a demand that they do not support the latest data communication bill. The link is here if anyone would care to take a look.
http://www.power-to-the-people.co.uk/2008/10/public-call-time-big-brother-britain/