The UK is about to become one of the world’s foremost surveillance states, allowing its police and intelligence agencies to spy on its own people to a degree that is unprecedented for a democracy. The UN’s privacy chief has called the situation “worse than scary.” Edward Snowden says it’s simply “the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy.”
The legislation in question is called the Investigatory Powers Bill. It’s been cleared by politicians and awaits only the formality of royal assent before it becomes law. The bill will legalize the UK’s global surveillance program, which scoops up communications data from around the world, but it will also introduce new domestic powers, including a government database that stores the web history of every citizen in the country. UK spies will be empowered to hack individuals, internet infrastructure, and even whole towns – if the government deems it necessary.
“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame?”
I’m 32. For the first time in my life I’m worried for the future. I realise it’s a privilege never to have had such worries before, but it’s still saddening.
It’s not too late to investigate potential citizenship in other European countries and moving.
I will still have EU citizenship after Brexit. Doesn’t mean I’m not still worried about what happens to the UK, though.
Too late. GCHQ/NSA is already at this level of surveillance, just unofficially.
Everything is fine 🙂
Edited 2016-11-24 03:49 UTC
ssssssssssssssssssssshh or they’ll add you to the “worried” list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora
Last year : http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34713435
The sad thing is obviously that the surveillance ain’t enough because you know, terrorism still happens.
But the heck, who fund them ? Have you ever watched Loopers ? When the killer loops in time and kill himself ?
It really looks like something happening nowadays…
Edited 2016-11-23 16:32 UTC
Terrorism is not happening to any degree that makes it relevant to make policy decision on. It is essentially non-existing, so don’t fall for the fear line they are feeding you.
Thought Europe was above this kind of stuff. 🙁
Well, most British people I know like to claim they aren’t really part of Europe anyway. Then again, France is part of Europe too… Hmm.
In your last sentence for “How” did this happen you link to Brexit … explain. How is Brexit responsible for this? The only way I can tell is that while folks were distracted by Brexit they snuck this crap in.
Partly distraction, however I’m guessing Thom is eluding to the fact that, once they exited the EU, they would no longer be bound by EU privacy laws and such (for whatever they’re worth).
On the other hand, France is part of the EU and they have similar mass-surveillance in place anyway. Maybe Brexit was also a good thing, in that it might prevent these even crazier laws from trickling up into the EU in the first place. Then again, if Britain gets away with it, the EU might try their own version of it.
If only George Orwell were alive today…
Yeah. No shit. Good point about Orwell.
This could be more of a NATO thing…
I have no idea why he’s mentioned Brexit in relation to the Investigatory Powers bill either.*
It’s certainly not because they snuck it in: the IPB has been widely and intensively covered in British media despite the current preoccupation with Trump and Britain leaving the EU.
*: Nor, for that matter, do I see the relevance of mentioning the EDL (a hopelessly fringe movement) or electoral reform (which, er, the people voted overwhelmingly against in a 2011 referendum).
They’re all signs of increased nationalism and racism, which are always – ALWAYS – based on fear, and an afraid people are a gullible people. Gullible enough, even, to sign away their rights – rights people fought and died for.
As for voting reform – the UK isn’t a democracy in the sense most people think of when they think of ‘democracy’. The number of seats a party occupies has effectively nothing to do with the actual votes cast. The end result is that the far-right conservative party has effectively totalitarian control over every single government institution, despite only getting 37% of the cast votes.
You think the situation in the US is bad, where Trump “won” the elections despite Clinton getting 2 million more votes? That shit is peanuts compared to the idiocy that is the UK electoral system.
All these things play a role in a government and society not functioning properly, leading to insane, Draconian laws like this.
This!
But we are also living at a time where people have no reverence for life (every life matters!). Many think that they deserve respect and dignity but others deserve it only if they have the same opinion as they have.
Strange times…
Whilst I’ll agree our electoral system (first past the post) is utterly broken, it is an unfair characterisation to describe the majority of the tory party as far right. This law is certainly troubling, and it should be opposed and discussed. That said, I don’t think it helps to frame the discussion in terms of a totalitarian party – the fact they are in power is as much a fault of the shambles of an opposition we have as anything else. The Tories, whilst a nasty bunch of gits, are hardly a far-right party. Likewise, the law calls for no such thing as a government database that I’m aware of – the records would be maintained by ISPs themselves. Still totally unworkable though.
To help frame my viewpoint – I am traditionally a labour voter but actually voted liberal last time – mainly because they opposed and successfully blocked the first iteration of this law.
Apples and oranges I’m afraid since we don’t elect our head of state. We elect our local member of parliament which, incidentally, is pretty much identical to the way our American friends elect their Congressional representatives.
(Nor, by the way, do I think the electoral college system is “bad”. It’s merely the system under which they have consented to be governed.)
BeamishBoy,
Where do you get the impression that “the governed” have consented to it? That’s trivializing an issue that in reality is highly debated.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/02/06/abolish-the-elect…
The implication about implicit consent and the conservation of the status quo is, I trust, clear.
The fact that the usefulness or fairness of the electoral college is debated is neither here nor there. Many things to which the demos consents – principally the status quo – are continual subjects of debate. Indeed the entire purpose of political debate is to change the prevailing notions of consent.
EDIT: I’ve just read this back and realised that talking about Locke and the declaration of independence makes me sound like a pompous arse. Sorry.
My point is that consent is understood to be distinct from assent. Assent involves an active approval for something whereas consent merely involves accepting that permission exists for that thing. Consent is assumed to exist on an issue or a law until political debate or circumstance forces a country to assent to change.
Hopefully that’s slightly more clear.
Edited 2016-11-24 03:06 UTC
BeamishBoy,
Nah. We all do it.
Edit: Maybe I’m still misunderstanding your point. Is it that if enough people disagreed, that we would overthrow the government? And so by not overthrowing the government, that’s considered implicit agreement?
Edited 2016-11-24 04:18 UTC
Bacon surely first underlining this. Also first screaming to tumble it down, later.
The Tories a ‘far right’ party? You really must read up on this more.
By the standards of the US GOP the Tories are flaming liberals.
Hi Thom,
Any chance you could get back to us to flesh out your thesis that the Conservative Party is both “far right” and “totalitarian”? You appear deliberately to be ignoring being called out on this.
Thanks.
A few UK institutions a truly totalitarian Government would need to control: Cabinet and Whitehall, Commons, Lords, Parliamentary Committees, Judiciary, Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, North Irish Assembly, &c.
– Conservatives have Cabinet and Whitehall, obviously, hence being described as a Government.
– They have a majority of 12 in the Commons (650 seats), so are subject to frequent rebellions and easily defeated by co-operation from others in the house.
– They are 150 short of a majority in the Lords, meaning their entire legislative programme can be frustrated, and despite the Parliament Act only one or two bills can be pushed through without the Lords’ acquiescence.
– Parliamentary Committees are now elected by members, not appointed by Government, so no Government can effectively control them.
– The judiciary is independent. The Government was just humiliated by a High Court decision to block them triggering Article 50 without Parliamentary assent.
– Scottish Parliament controlled by anti-Conservative Scottish National Party.
– Welsh Assembly controlled by anti-Conservative Labour Party.
– North Irish Assembly barely controlled by anyone.
As a result of only getting 37% of the vote they are hanging on to Government by the barest of requirements. The only thing keeping them from going to the country to get a better mandate is the weakness of the opposition and the distraction of Brexit.
You may not like the voting system, you may be right, but that doesn’t make the outcome totalitarian.
Unfortunately draconian laws aren’t only passed by totalitarian political systems. They can also be passed when the people don’t bother preventing them from being passed, allowing a weak Government a free hand.
“the IPB has been widely and intensively covered in British media”
The bovine excrement odour is strong. There have been small out of the way pieces in newspapers, the odd buried story on the BBC. None of which properly covered the bill
Lexis tells me there have been 43 front-page stories mentioning “investigatory powers bill” or “snooper’s charter” in the past four months in four of the major British dailies (Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Mail). Countless editorial comments. Plenty of coverage on Radio 4, LBC, the Today Programme and Newsnight. Plenty of discussion on the Daily Politics and Sunday Politics on BBC2. Coverage on Marr on Sunday mornings. Even the horror show that Robert Peston is running on ITV has covered it.
Just because you (and I for that matter) disagree with the content of the bill doesn’t mean it hasn’t been discussed at length in the media.
Edited 2016-11-27 03:34 UTC
Stories mentioning. That is not widely and intensively covering. That is the point, they have been small pieces, not main headlines, and then barely covering the content of the bill.
The idea that this bill has not received widespread coverage in British media is simply fantasy. Unfortunately, the majority of people in the UK don’t appear to be sufficiently bothered by the contents of the bill to prevent its passage.
Edited 2016-11-28 02:34 UTC
Looks like we have different interpretations of coverage and in depth. Having watched, listened, or read these supposed sources of intensive coverage I still fail to come to your conclusion.
Because the European Court of Justice can rule any part of the act illegal if it conflicts with EU law?
Free big-screen TV’s for everybody!
Being afraid of globalism is a legitimate concern when you realize that this borderless utopia is being set up by the same people that fund both sides of every war. You think they won’t go to war against you, the individuals of every nation, once they’re done erasing the national borders of every sovereign country?
The media are using the outrageous behaviour of the extreme right minority to de-legitimize all and any forms of nationalism or right-of-centre thought as immediate xenophobia and racism. Anyone who disagrees with the global marxist utopia is persona non grata.
While these new content restrictions are bad news for some, and the thin end of the wedge for the rest of us, it is no doubt a nice little distraction to deflect attention away from the globalists who are blackmailing each other with far worse to keep their little goal of world marxism going unquestioned.
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.â€
― George Orwell, 1984
It won’t be long before nationalist web sites are blocked for having offensive (i.e. not marxist) ideology.
Four legs good, two legs bad.
Edited 2016-11-23 20:45 UTC
“World Marxism”? WTF? Are you sure you know what Marxism means?
What on earth makes you believe that globalization as we are experiencing it has anything to do with Marxism at all?
Please look up a definition of Marxism on some reliable source.
If you have to choose an enemy be sure you know what your enemy is, don’t just repeat empty words you heard from some duckhead on ZeroHedge or the likes. Otherwise you might find someday that you have spent all your life battling a nonexistent ghost.
Unless something fundamental changed in the legislation since I last heard about the details, the basic premise is that ISPs will be required to store so-called “Internet Records” of users for 1 year. The legislation was oddly silent on what an “Internet Record” actually was. At best we (the community) figure that that the authors genuinely believe there is some sort of Internet equivalent of a POTS “Call Record”, and that this would somehow suffice.
At the last conference I attended when this was discussed, nobody, from network engineers to large ISP spokespeople to lawyers, had any idea what the Government was actually proposing or how they’d even implement it; how would you even stream that amount of data to a storage platform? How big would 1 year of “Internet Records” even be?
The entire legislation appears to be technically incompetent and either very expensive or impossible to implement, and appears to be doomed to failure. But not before the industry & government become involved in an epic (and expensive) battle.
Congrats UK, you get a starter version of the Patriot Act. Hopefully you’ll never upgrade to the pro version we have. Things can certainly be far worse and done so bypassing how you feel about it.
There have been terror attacks across Europe where many innocent people died. If government surveillance can prevent such terror attacks, then I have no problems with GCHQ spying on me, I don’t use Internet for anything illegal. I couldn’t care less about your “democratic rights” if there is a possibility my family members could be blown to shreds by some fanatics.
Just listen to this hippie bullshit:
“And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission”
I very much doubt that surveillance will diminish your freedom, unless you get caught doing something illegal – selling drugs, committing fraud, or planning acts of terrorism.
Mass spying on your own population isn’t going to prevent shit, hasn’t done it before, and now it is no different.
Giving up your freedom for security isn’t going to get you either one, also.
The argument “I have nothing to hide” means nothing for an automated, soulless mass surveillance system, you are not a citizen for him.
http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/19/debunking-the-dangerous-nothing-to-…
https://www.aclu.org/blog/you-may-have-nothing-hide-you-still-have-s…
Edited 2016-11-24 09:39 UTC
Anyone can copy and paste random links to support their argument
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/terror-attack-foiled…
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/uk-intelligence-services-have-sto…
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/08/gchq-surveillance-ne…
By your reckoning, China must be one of the freest societies around.
Edited 2016-11-24 10:11 UTC
You are the one who is an idiot! I live in the UK, not China and I trust the UK government to implement their surveillance policy properly and not to abuse it, hence why people vote for a particular government and their policies. If I had my way, I’d use surveillance and anything else to catch and lock up as many criminal parasites as possible.
When the government is unable to control its country borders, or deport foreign criminals and terrorists because this would violate their democracy or human rights, then there is something seriously wrong with our society. This is why many British people voted Brexit, they want their government to serve their people, instead of being told by the EU bureaucrats what they can and can’t do.
Make Great Britain great again!
Make Great Britain great by doing what the terrorists want you to do? Is that your idea of greatness? Remember when the IRA was terrorising England? People admired the British stiff upper lip. And now, you’ve traded that for cowering in the corner afraid of shadows. You’re not great. You’re a fucking child.
I’m not going to be rude to you, all I can say is that people who have very liberal views on certain things ( no surveillance of any kind, human rights act for criminals, uncontrolled immigration) have a tendency to undermine our way of life and endanger people’s lives by making the UK and Europe a soft target for various criminals.
That’s probably why Europe has some of the lowest crime rates by a huge margin – crime rates that go down the more “liberal” the specific nation is.
Don’t let the facts hit you on the way out!
Please don’t make things up, crime has nothing to do with how liberal your country is, which is why in liberal Sweden and Germany crimes rates shot up as those countries were flooded with migrants.
Crime has many different origins, but the most common are – poverty, drug use, easy access to guns, poor education and influence by gang culture, etc.
Someone who has committed a crime shouldn’t have human rights?
How about the right to life? (Article 2)
Not to be tortured (Article 3)
To get a fair trial (Article 6)
Not to be declared a criminal retroactively (Article 7)
Freedom of thought and religion (Article 9)
Effective remedy for breaches of human rights (Article 13)
Not to be discriminated against (Article 14)
What people who complain about human rights fail to understand is the Human Rights Act, and ECHR which it implements, contains a number of exceptions which allow things like the right to a private life (Article 8) to be ignored for things like national security, for some articles (Article 10 for instance) for the prevention of crime. These very sensibly are not allowed for things like 3 and 6.
I didn’t mention Article 5, liberty and security for a good reason. Being convicted of a crime quite often results in temporarily losing this one. Which is allowable under HRA and ECHR.
It is a well known fact that in the past a number of convicted terrorists have not been deported out of the UK, because their lawyers used human rights act. And when they were finally deported, this was done at a huge cost to the British taxpayer, that money would have been better spent on schools and hospitals.
And to answer your question, if you commit acts of terrorism where innocent people lose their lives, then you should have no rights at all. You should be hanged, drawn and quartered. What would you say to the families of those who died in the Paris and Nice attacks? What about their rights and their lives?
Still, keep being angry at whatever bogieman of the week is making you angry. I’m sure it’s a fun hobby.
It would be nice if writing poetry and open letters to your enemies would break their hearts and make them stop killing people. Unfortunately the real world is very brutal and unforgiving. If you value your freedom and your life, you really have to fight for it.
Do you value your freedom? I don’t see you fighting very hard for it. In fact I see you rolling over and offering to give even more of your freedom away.
“Sh1t happens!” (c) Real Life.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/23/1603405/-Here-s-Adolph-Hit…
I wonder what Churchill would think of the current state of the UK. Pretty sure he would find it a twisted abomination of its former ideals.
Edited 2016-11-24 12:23 UTC
What’s your point? Just because me or Donald Trump used a vaguely similar phrase to what Hitler used in the past, does not mean we support Hitler’s ideology or admire him in any way. You can make all kinds of assumptions about people, but most people in the UK who voted Brexit are not racists, quite the opposite, they are very tolerant and welcoming people. There is nothing racist about having full control of your country borders and not taking orders from Brussels, but being in control of your own destiny and making your own decisions on important policies.
The similarity of the phrase isn’t simply coincidence. The belief in a begone national greatness which has to be restored (make .. great again) is common to all fascist and/or reactionary movements. Your utopia is projected into an imagined past which only exists in bad movies.
Which is quite different from conservatives which simply believe in not breaking the existing order of things which kind of works.
Edited 2016-11-26 21:20 UTC
You trust the government (of whatever party) who constantly avoid telling the truth and will switch their position on a whim in order to stay in power?
You trust every individual who will have access to all this data without a warrant being required? Hint, it is not just the police or spy agencies. The police have been found abusing their access to the vast amounts of data they already had, why do you think this will change?
You trust the ability of all involved to secure this data from hackers who will attempt to blackmail people?
Edited 2016-11-24 19:40 UTC
You’re dead right. This is why I keep my Tiger Repealing Rock on my desk. I know it’s working, as I have never once seen a tiger.
You should look to history to learn more about what affects mass government surveillance of its’ own people does to those on both sides – the ones with the power and everyone else who are all targets. Spoiler Alert! It does not end well, ever!
Mass government surveillance isn’t about “protecting” you from terrorists or not having anything to hide. Those are just cheap excuses attempting to justify an unjust self-granted power. It’s a control mechanism. For humans it creates a long-term feeling of oppression, which in turn has serious society-wide psychological affects.
Like I said, history is there waiting for you to be educated with. This kind of behavior by government/ruling is not new and the results are consistently disastrous. Whether or not `you` have anything to hide is absolutely irrelevant. Turning an entire population into psychological prisoners neither protects their freedoms, nor protects them from terrorism – especially when its their own government they’re more afraid of. Don’t let yourself be overcome by hyper-fear and thus make you believe what the government is doing is in your best interest.
UK could have impeccable handling of it [which has not been shown until now].
Still, We just need to remember how National Socialism went on blitz and took Intelligence for their own purposes.
Blitz can be on the Digital Tubes Today. Several Cases This Year, by the way
How about if I don’t like what the government are doing, so decide to stand for election? There is information stored on all my internet activity for the last year. Even if that activity isn’t illegal, some of it may be embarrassing, or might upset people with particular views. That information can then be easily accessed and used to smear me, eliminating any threat posed to those in power.
Police and security service personal have been repeatedly found browsing through data of ex partners, or whistle blowers in their organsiation and using the details to smear them.
What if some nutcase comes to power and decides to create a list of all members of a particular religion? This can be easily found by looking at your web history and you can then be targeted for whatever inevitably comes next, quite possibly, blowing your family members to shreds.
What you mean like Donald Trump running for the president and finding out there is footage of him making offensive comments about women. OK lets ban all cameras and storage of video clips, just in case this can be used in the future to smear someone.
Please get over your privacy paranoia and move on with the times. There is already a huge amount of data that is recorded about everyone. I don’t need government systems to find out something embarrassing about you, I just need to look at your facebook and twitter page.
Facebook and Twitter are things people choose to share. Reading a website about mental health issues possibly isn’t. Support groups for someone who is confused about their sexuality may not be something they broadcast to the world, yet would be in the collected data.
You really don’t have a clue about the damage such things can do. What about those Ashley Maddison members who were driven to suicide after the hack revealed their usage? I suppose you think killing themselves was what they deserved for being immoral?
Your very view point, is frankly just idiotic.
Derp I have nothing to hide, so I don’t mind being spied on. You sure you have nothing to hide ? So you don’t mind, pictures of your dick being stored and looked at by intelligence agencies ? Throughout your life you have been a total law abiding citizen ? when your were in uni you never smoked some pot ? Or you’ve never gotten drunk and done something stupid ? How about now, are you happy for people you have never met to know exactly who you are, what you have searched for, your illnesses / medical conditions. What you might have said in your home – throw away comments because you were in a bad mood for example. You sure there is nothing that could be twisted to make you guilty of some crime ?
How about your kids, if you have any, are you happy for them to be viewed nude, for their sometimes stupid opinions to be recorded as fact, for their stupid behaviour being recorded and possibly used as evidence against them ? You are not only dooming yourself with this belief but you are dooming all future generations, from the moment they are born to the moment they die to be under mass surveillance.
I have nothing to hide either, but I sure as shit believe in freedom of expression, to be able to live without surveillance. I am innocent and should have the right to use my computer and phone, without some ass hole snooping in on my conversations. Its like having the nosy old woman, living next door constantly listening to everything I say.
Less than 10 years ago middle eastern, chinese and Russian governments were lambasted by the media for their all encompassing surveillance programs on their citizens and everyone was waving a red flag as this could be seen as dangerous. Yet here we are 10 years later, with idiots like you willingly selling our freedom to feel more secure. Make no mistake this guarantees nothing, but it does remove your freedom.
Has all of these anti-piracy measures actually helped to eliminate piracy, or just wasted the time of innocent people that don’t pirate stuff ?
Sure you’ve got nothing to hide, nothing to worry about. Less than about 80 years ago we had 2 world wars, a totalitarian regime some how managed to fool the mass German population, with speeches about offering a better life, fixing all of the German peoples ills and illusions of grandeur. Surveillance was employed on a massive scale, with neighbour spying on neighbour. Fast forward 80 odd years, here we are again. The foolish again falling for bullshit propaganda about security giving up their rights whole-sale for some bullshit notion that being spied on somehow makes them more secure. That people from other parts of the world are the cause of all their ills and worries, people of a different skin colour are evil, everyone is evil, trust no one, only trust in your government, they have your best interest at heart…
Democracy, where you will be spied on, where you have no rights and where you are assumed guilty. This is democracy, this is freedom and you are an idiot.
I find it strange how people like like you equate surveillance to mass tyranny and prophesy world war 3. Please educate yourself on how Hitler and National Socialism came to power. This was due to political and economic upheavals that plunged Germany into chaos, not because German people gave up their rights. Once you have a dictator in power then anything can be used to oppress people – surveillance, police, jails, army, use of force and guns, and so on. Your democratic rights and freedoms can evaporate in a very short time, and no amount of blogging, lobbying and demonstrating will be able to bring those rights back, hence you could end up with a civil war. Nothing really guarantees that your democracy and freedom will always exist, because democracy can always turn on you and people can democratically vote for someone like Hitler and the new National Socialism. Wonder how Donald Trump got to power?
If you are worried about the rise of National Socialism and extreme ideology, then you need to worry about the government who do not not listen to its people and fail to improve their peoples’ lives. When you have uncontrolled immigration, fear of crime/terrorism, low wages and stagnant economy, then people start voting for someone who has extreme views and promises to fix all their problems.
I would much rather have a sane government with proper surveillance and strong counter terrorism programs, as opposed to having some liberal tossers like Jeremy Corbyn who will plunge the country into chaos and destroy UK intelligence and military apparatus.
rom508,
You make a good case for your view, but you still have to admit that delta0.delta0 and ilovebeer are absolutely right to look to history to point out the abuses of mass surveillance by authorities who misuse the system with no oversight. Hell, in the US our own NSA lied to congress and if it wasn’t for someone courageously whistle-blowing the facts and willing to be labeled a traitor by the largest military force in the world, then even our elected representatives wouldn’t know what’s going on. Now, that’s f***ed up.
Government is suppose to serve the people and we’re supposed to be the boss of it, not the other way around. So if anything, the government activities should be monitored by the people it’s working for rather than them monitoring us. It happens slowly and covertly enough that most of us don’t notice the shift in power. But a government that’s contemplating entitlement to mass-monitor private citizens is already showing dangerous signs of turning into an authoritarian regime. Even assuming today’s leaders are well-intentioned, eventually one with a propensity for power and disregard for law will find a way to use it to empower the leader and his party and against his personal enemies.
Edited 2016-11-26 15:44 UTC
Every major country engaged in spying for many many decades. It has been going on for such a long time, it is not really news anymore. Certain things are meant to be secret and only known to a small group of people, otherwise they wouldn’t be secret anymore. Certain government departments have operational independence and make their own decisions on how things need to be done. If you had incompetent politicians and joe public constantly sticking their noses into their business and telling those departments what to do and how to do it, then NSA, CIA, FBI, etc would be tied in red tape and would not be able to function very effectively.
You can’t really be the boss of government, it would be chaos if everyone had a say in every decision and policy. You elect a government that represents your views and let them do the job until the next time when people have to vote.
People on these forums rant on about how they don’t trust the government and how the government is this evil freedom oppressing machine. Well the very reason why people have their freedom and security is because the government is there protecting the freedom and security. No government is perfect and mistakes are made, but you trust hospitals when you need urgent medical treatment, you trust police to help you when someone burgles or attacks you, you trust the safety of roads, bridges and public transport, you trust the army to protect you against foreign and domestic enemies.
rom508,
Of course I know government services are helpful, but you aren’t going to fool me by moving the goalposts.
Obligatory quote from Benjamin Franklin:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Edited 2016-11-26 18:52 UTC
If you are going to blindly copy and paste someone else quotes, please try to understand their original meaning:
https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-f…
https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said
rom508,
That’s a good catch, if you don’t want to believe they are generalizable, that’s up to you. However one of the reasons it’s not possible to find direct quote about mass surveillance is because they simply didn’t have the technology at the time. We don’t have the privilege of hearing what the founders would say of modern government practices, we often have to extrapolate our constitutional rights into new contexts.
I believe, given the tone of the 3rd and 4th amendments, they would be livid to discover that governments are condoning mass unwarranted surveillance. To those who would say the founders would approve of it, I say BS. But I can’t deny it is a major weakness that the constitution doesn’t specifically say it. Technological gaps have become the foundation for government mission creep and justifications for authoritarian entitlements over our privacy.
Remember, remember day 5th of November…
There, I fixed your quote. The full line (most people quote) is:
“Remember, remember the 5th of November, [for] Gunpowder, treason and plot.”
Before it was “borrowed” by Alan Moore/”V for Vendetta”, it was a Protestant chant recalling the failed attempt by Catholic “terrorists”** to destroy the UK Houses of parliament whilst is session and attended by King James 1 in the year 1605 (thus killing the government and King in one act of terrorism.) It’s not a call to arms for anarchists, it’s a call for conformity and anti terrorism. Ironic, eh?
** I’m using modern terms here. But they were “treasonists” at the time.
It’s better to live in China, rather then UK. At least they don’t lie to their people.
Really? You really believe the Chinese government doesn’t lie to the Chinese people?
Living in the UK you have to realise that most of the big parties want these kinds of powers.
Obviously the Conversatives, the current UK Government. Also the Labour party, our ‘opposition’ and previous government. You might ask who set all of those CCTV systems. Finally the SNP also want their share of the data pie. They are currently the devolved Scottish Government. Oh Labour and SNP will wring their hands and waggle their fingers, but when it comes down to it a stiff breeze could offer more opposition.
So really all you are left with is the Lib Dems, who last time I checked could send all their MPs to work in a single mini-bus.
The SNP stood alongside the Lib Dems in opposing the IP Act.
Apologies you are right. Should have fact checked before writing in anger.
Having listened to quite a bit from Annie Machon (ex MI5) and others, I think great pronouncements on either side of this one are liable to come unstuck as events unfold.
On the whole: colour me cynical: I suspect most countries do this sort of surveillance anyway and only a few will admit it is going on. The game is frequently played such that the democratically elected politicians do not have sufficient vetted clearance to exercise proper oversight. It feels like the military industrial complex are pulling the strings for their own ends.
These Are Not The Keys to The Reign. Just the Entitlements.