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http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/Elect ... story.htmlLetters Electronic snooping will take away our freedomMonday, April 09, 2012
ANYONE who saw the film The Lives of Others will recall the scene in which the East German secret police, the Stasi, steam open private letters, read the contents and then reseal them.
We might have thought this kind of intrusion into people's private lives had ended, in Europe at least, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet empire.
But our government, in Britain in 2012, wants to enable state investigators to do the equivalent of the Stasi's work by giving them carte blanche to examine any and every e-mail, text and other electronic communication sent to or from any citizen of this country.
Wherever you are, whomever you are in contact with, you will never know whether you are being watched. And nobody else will either, because none of the snooping will need a warrant.
The Stasi, of course, justified their activities by conjuring up threats to the East German state, and our government is likewise trying to frighten us with the menace of terrorism and subversion into accepting prying into our private lives to a degree that is comparable to what goes on in authoritarian societies such as Burma and China.
Many voters in this country thought that the Coalition promised a new direction, as the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties had both opposed earlier Labour government attempts to bring in similar mass surveillance of communications, and in the early days of the present administration there was talk of restoring civil liberties and rolling back the database state.
Sadly, much of the promised freedom has failed to materialise and even the much vaunted Freedom Bill has yet to even make it on to the statue books.
Ministers seem unable or unwilling to stand up to the powerful security lobby comprising MI5, GCHQ and the Home Office.Nick Wray Highfield Road Derby
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