http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... power.html Blanket snooping is abuse of powerBy TREVOR KAVANAGH
Published: Today at 01:17
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Dozens from the UK were rounded up in Afghanistan and held in Guantanamo Bay. Now we learn scores of radicalised Brits are being trained for a "holy war" in Somalia. So police and security services have their work cut out. They deserve all the help they can get. But Tory MPs and civil liberty campaigners are shocked by draconian new plans to put every citizen under surveillance.
Internet companies will be told to collect and store all online activities.
They will reveal precisely who we are in touch with, where and when.
Tory MP David Davis, who resigned as Shadow Home Secretary over civil rights, yesterday warned the measures were over the top.
"There are already adequate laws for surveillance," he said. "If it is needed, it should be subject to a warrant, not carried out indiscriminately."
Extreme circumstances require extreme measures.
But Britain is already one of the most spied-on societies in the free world.
Most of us accept CCTV, police drones, satellite trackers and automatic number plate recognition because we have nothing to hide.
But we have also learned that blanket surveillance - in the wrong hands - can be a dangerous step too far.
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