Blair, Blunkett turn Britain into police state

Here are the title deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home...we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their I most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence -- Winston Churchill, Fulton speech 1946.

THIS WEEK the UK government will give seven government departments and every local authority as well as a number of quasi-governmental bodies including the Financial Services Authority and the Health and Safety Executive the right to inspect records of anyone and everyone's email and mobile phone number accounts.

This measure will likely go through on the nod on Tuesday and is a further extension of powers taken by the state which it justifies by the "War against Terrorism".

A parliamentary subcommittee is currently investigating failures by our security services in the run up to the 9th of September atrocities last year - no doubt the ability to snoop on law abiding citizens of the UK will allow them to have a heap more data they can incompetently fail to act on before the next act of terrorism happens.

Our Minister of the Interior is David Blunkett, a career politician whose biography can be found on his own web site here. The Home Office, like every other UK department these days, has to have a marketing motto which expresses the exact opposite of its real aims. Blunkett's department motto is: "Building a safe, just and tolerant society."

Its own Web site here tells us that it no longer has responsibilities for data protection, freedom of information or human rights which conveniently fell under the protection of the Lord Chancellor's department this time last week.

Blunkett is still in charge of police, prisons, immigration, passports and more importantly our "spook" department, MI5.

We daresay it will be very useful for a bunch of voyeuristic nosey parkers to be able to pinpoint UK whistleblowers who have or might caught the Labour Government on the hop by leaking embarrassing emails to journalists.

Even more useful if the spooks in dirty raincoats can pinpoint the exact location of the whistleblowers by knowing where they and their mobile phones were at the time.

This proposed move is the latest in a torrent of legislation which has crept onto the UK statute books over the last few years, drafted by nonentities who clearly don't give a jot for any rights individuals might have, and who do not have a clue about the benefits technology can offer either, apart from harnessing it in the service of techno-totalitarianism.

The Labour Party, while it was in opposition, pretended to be interested in individual human rights but that was clearly junked when it was time for the leaders and their apparatchiks to engage in some serious feathering of the nests and poking of snouts into troughs.

The INQUIRER thinks it's clearly time for you to try on some shiny black boots, Tony and David, and engage in even more self-important crowing and strutting about, just like every cockerel likes to do on a dunghill, as you lead the so called "Mother of Parliament" down this dreary and miserable Big Brotherish road to nowhere. µ

See Also
Would you like spies with that? net.wars column
The Dataveillance Society net.wars column
UK email big brother snooper identified
UK snoopers hit the street
UK government seeks to extend snooping laws

External Links
New European Civil Liberties group formed
David Blunkett holds liberty and judges in contempt Grauniad article
Blunkett puts the case for identity cards Financial Times