When George Orwell began his most famous book with 'It was a cold, bright day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen' he may have got the month right but he was 28 years out with his estimation of when the Big Brother Society would come into existence.
He thought 1984 but it was April 2012 when the UK Government put forward its plans to monitor the public's internet usage, email and social media communications.
Already the UK population has the most CCTV cameras per head of population than any other country in the world and now they want to read your E-mails, monitor your social network chats and check on what you choose to look at on the internet.
Even former Tory David Davis is against the plan, warning that: 'What is proposed is completely unfettered access to every single communication you make' but Government mouthpiece Anthony Glees, director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, used the recent killings in Toulouse, France as grounds upon which to support the measures, saying it needed to be done because 'in the year of the Olympic Games and the Queen's diamond jubilee. Terrorists could be monitored and attacks dealt with'.
Another Downing Street spokesman said: 'It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public' so as with all the other proposals which chipped away at our freedoms since 9/11, it is for our own good.
Expect the old 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear' fallacy to be wheeled out and maybe a terrorist alert in the upcoming weeks and months wouldn't hurt because a frightened society is a more compliant society looking towards the Government to keep us safe.
I would have thought that any decent terrorist would know how to hide their IP address, how to use fake E-mail addresses or route communications through someone else's computer (especially as the Government has announced they will be checking emails etc), so if these proposals won't do anything to stop determined terrorists, who will they monitor?
Will anyone spouting political opposition to Government policies be placed on a 'watch' list along with anyone in a Union or has ever appeared at a demonstration or is organising one?
When i was a kid growing up during the Cold War, it was the Communists who were the bad guys, who snooped and monitored their citizens and the internet monitoring in Iran and China are frequently held up as signs of an authorative regime but we are slowly evolving into the same people we attack over lack of public freedoms.
But then...just as i'm wondering just why we align the democratic practices of the UK with China and Iran i remember that the Conservative Government, in the past couple of weeks, have been getting a right kicking from all quarters for the Granny Tax, links to News International and the £250,000 donations to have dinner with the Prime Minister and influence Government policy and it made sense, the good old political trick of generating a story to shift attention away from the real bad stuff.
So if it is something they will abandon at a later date under some guise of 'listening to the concerns of the people' then all is good because the real stories will then be long forgotten but just in case it isn't, and they will soon be reading all my emails then i state clearly so some civil servant at GCHQ doesn't misunderstand, you all suck and we should do everything possible to rid ourselves of this corrupt, pathetic Government!!
12 comments:
I'm not too worried, mainly for this reason :)
lucy,
too me your are consistently inconsistent. you are all over the map. you want "racist" words to be a crime at the cost of free speech, then you turn around and you don't want the government getting in our business by watching our web activity?
i know you think you are logical and i recall you saying you take each issue on an item by item basis, but i can't find the principles that you base your thinking on.
the government is your hero when you like it, and they are the enemy when you don't like it.
too me the government is always an evil - a necessary evil, but an evil...
just saying...
q
"the government is your hero when you like it, and they are the enemy when you don't like it."
Erm... surely she's just saying that she wants the government to do some things, but not everything.
And in saying this, she would be in agreement with 99.99% of the population, by my rough estimate.
Of course, society wouldn't necessarily agree with her in terms of the exact areas which require more or less (or no) government intervention, but this is what nuanced political debate is all about, constructing a logical argument in order about what our paid representatives should be doing and why, or where they should not be involved at all.
Your attempt to find an inconsistency in Lucy's position, simply because she's advocating intervention in (a) but not (b) is logically flawed, and therefore unsuccessful.
Very true Cheezy, loved the line about 'that same government would struggle to arrange a children's party if provided with a clown, a bouncy castle, some children and an unlimited supply of jelly'.
I would like to think q that through all my 'serious' posts there is a constant theme of fairness, equality and nobody being treated worse than anyone else. If that means sometimes we need the Government to regulate things and keep my ideals on track then i am for it. If that means the Government standing back sometimes then i am for that also. No contradiction there, just making each judgement as it comes.
lucy,
your motives on topics of humanity have always unwavering and admirable. i wasn't trying to insult you or impugn your character. i apologize if you think i was doing that. my bad. Now when it comes to economics,,,, just kidding.
Still, i think you ignore "human nature" on a regular basis; and I think you believe that human nature can be changed; and that government is the mechanism to change human nature. By the way, i was somewhat disappointed that after some non-trivial effort you did not even comment on my latest post which was in direct response to your comment... (yes, it is all about me).
in spite of cheezy'z argument/logic, i stick by my position that you do not seem to have a philosophy for the role of government other than to "force people" to pursue life in a way that agrees with your views. i further take the position that your views are subjective and fluctuate like a flag in wind (after all, it is conservatives like me that resist change to old ideals, right?).
example: you support freedom of speech, unless you deem it racist...
The world has racists. your response, use the force of government to override the freedom of speech. Ah, but then you go a step further and take the position that if any person interprets words as being racist, then it is. This is not a standard (it is a flag in the wind and changes as often as our language changes and it is subject to someone with a chip on their shoulder). Further, you typically support such an action by saying the majority agree. Really, a majority of flags in the wind doesn’t make the decision right, it is just the majority imposing their force... there was a time when the majority supported slavery, but that didn’t make it right did it?
q
Show me someone whose ideas are ideologically & dogmatically 'consistent' and I'll show you someone who's wrong a good deal of the time.
wrong by what standard? popularism?
q
i believe the "wisdom of the masses" is an oxymorn. "herd mentality" is wrong a good deal of the time...
q
On the subject of human nature q i disagree. I believe human nature can change and your own example of slavery is a point in question. As you say, the majority believed it to be okay but now it is abhorrent to almost everybody. Is that not human nature changing and did it not take Governments to bring about that change? A few generations ago gays were abused and people were afraid to come out. Now we have civil partnerships and the debate is about gay marriage so that is human nature becoming more tolerant. You seem to have a very negative view on your fellow man while i believe we have the ability to change for the better so we become more tolerant, fair and understanding and the big decisions to make that sort of society comes from a mix of Government and certain individuals. I'm on my phone and it has taken forever to write this so i will come back to your other points later.
"wrong by what standard? popularism?"
On the contrary. Second-hand ideology (aka 'letting other people do your thinking for you') seems to be the ubiquitous thing these days.
I meant 'wrong' by my own standards, of course.
I'm not denying ideology's attraction, Q. I tried a couple on for size myself, back when I was an undergrad. I just found that they kept on crashing hard against this thing called 'reality'. So I ditched them and never looked back.
fair enough cheezy, though the USA founding fathers were guided by ideology as they structured a constitutional process that allows wide variance yet has protected our essential individual rights for over 200 years - in spite of democrats like FDR, LBJ, and now BHO.
lucy, behaviors can change without the underlying human nature changing, meaning in the right circumstances we could go back to accepting slavery... hence the concept that "history repeats itself". it repeats because of human nature.
and for the record, slavery was a human advancement... prior to slavery when one people conquered another people, they ate them. it seems cannabalism was a global phenom...
q
lucy,
i prefer to think that i have a realistic view of humans.
As a result, i see "government as a necessary evil". i obviously base this on the thinking of the US founding fathers (and the people that influenced them).
i support a federal government but believe we should be obsessed with minimizing it at all times - as opposed to turning to it to solve everything deemed to be a problem.
we make life complex, but truth is simple I (not to be confused with easy). the most common way we make life complex is by denying reality.
also, i don't consider reality to be negative. escapism is negative in my view.
q
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