"New" Government Plans to Snoop on Email and Social Networks: Tinfoil Hat Time?

[miss_s_b]

Under the last Labour government, there were plans to force ISPs to store information which could be accessed by the government on a whim. These plans were quietly shelved after howls of outrage from all right-thinking people.

Apparently, this government, prey to the same pressures from power-hungry securocrats, are considering putting a very similar bill into the Queen's speech this year. And since the news came out there have been very similar (and totally justified) howls of outrage from some of my favourite people. The thing is...

The Lib Dems are in government now. Even as a junior coalition partner, if we can't stop this in its tracks, if we can't prevent this red line from being crossed, then what's the bloody point? In economic terms, we Lib Dems run the gamut from practically communist to totally individualist Libertarian, but the thing that unites us is our love for freedom. If we capitulate on the basic freedoms like not being snooped by the government then we really are utterly pointless, as so many in the media and the other parties really want us to be.

And yet, this news has been leaked by un-named sources... There's a part of me that wonders if those un-named sources aren't some very useful Lib Dems trying to scupper this before it even gets on to the starting blocks. If that's the case, I say keep up the good work ma'am (or sir).

Comments

[bagpuss]

I have to say if the Lib Dems also fail to prevent this after failing to prevent tution fees inceases (not that they necessarily should of) and the NHS reforms (IMHO a travesty) then presumably pretty much all their general supporters have been alienated on the basis of one of these things and surely all that will happen is your party dies a death at the next election which will be a great loss for UK politics

[miss_s_b]

Yup.

[andrewducker]

If the Lib-Dems do not stand up to protect civil liberties then their death will be no great loss to anything.

The whole point of the Lib-Dems (and the reason I've voted for them and been a member) is to stand up for liberty and democracy. If they do not do so then they do not stand for anything.

[bagpuss]

A loss in the sense a move to more or less two party politics especially when there isn't much to put between them is a shame rather than because what the lib dems parliamentary party has become will be missed

[http://www.nickbarlow.com/blog/]

I wanted to believe your last paragraph might be the explanation, but having seen how other policies have gone, I was pretty sure it wasn't the case. Having now seen Clegg being quoted in favour of this, it's clear we're being sold down the river yet again.

Of course, what might happen is that there'll be all sorts of rage from the membership and Clegg et al will come back and say that the proposals have changed, they've had some Very Real Concessions (now the police will have to knock before kicking down your door in the middle of the night) and they'll vote for the proposals while chorusing 'but Labour would have done worse...'

[(Anonymous)]

I'm just leaving this here, from my local LD activist list, without further comment:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/1_wMtlFHrktpyOEFSkRSmBnOBPYDkPF6y-gL7Es_h0tu58aPVeHq9p45ulRcX/edit?pli=1

(The list were then suitibly up in arms about it and the local party and MP are doing a lot to attempt to get this craziness reversed, but these are _not_ good things to be circulating as briefing material - especially the sickening 'example' at the end...)

[lonemagpie]

I suspect, since it's identical to Labour's 2006 system, that the longtime Whitehall Mandarins who stay in place while governments come and go that are behind this.

But if Quisling Clegg's saying he's in favour, he needs to resign his membership of the Lib Dems (having forgotten, like David Alton did and several others have over the years, what the word liberal means) and just join the Conservative Party.

At the very least, he needs to be taken down as LD leader. Right fucking now.

[miss_s_b]

There are angry emails pinging about the various Lib Dem email lists I am on saying very similar things.

[daweaver]

For various reasons, including but not limited to the substantive post, I'm not in a place to comment sensibly. That's for values of "sensibly" that exclude four-letter words and stuff I'll regret in the morning.

So, instead, someone else's words.

"The database state is a poor substitute for the human judgement essential to the delivery of public services. Worse than that, it gives people false comfort that an infallible central state is looking after their best interests."

That's from page 90 of "Invitation to Join the Government of the United Kingdom", published in 2010 by Conservative Central Office.