THE IMPULSE OF all governments is naturally to impose themselves on their citizens; to monitor, regulate and tax them as much as they think they can get away with. Machiavelli sums it up in The Prince: “The people are more honest in their intentions than the nobles are, because the latter want only to oppress the people, whereas they only want not to be oppressed.” Just update “the nobles” to “the state” and you have it.
Unfortunately we live in times in which the whole political clerisy, including the mainstream media, are corrupt. Corrupt that is, not so much out of desire for personal gain, but corrupt because they live in a bubble detached from the rest of the population and because nearly everything they do is against the interests of the very people they are supposed to look after. Within that bubble they all the breathe same ideological air, irrespective of party.
Now the current government has decided to renege on its pre-election promise to “roll back” the intrusive surveillance legislation of the previous government and implement what had already been planned. In the UK the details – not the content – of all our telephone calls, (landline and mobile) and internet activity are already being logged for possible examination by the security services and others, courtesy of the real government in Brussels. The new legislation expands on the retention and weakens the law in terms of who can access that information and how easily.
The next step in a couple of years will be to log the actual content. This will be accompanied by exactly the same justifications as now, that it’s to counter terrorism and crime. This is a such an obvious untruth it doesn’t deserve consideration. And yet much of the mainstream media, uninformed and flabby-minded as always, repeat the mantra from the official press releases and quizz critics with surely the dumbest, most asinine question that could be asked: “Well, if you’ve got nothing to hide, why should you be afraid?” The straightest and politest answer is “If I’ve got nothing to hide, why should I be put under surveillance?”
So it is that little by little our freedoms and privacy are being sliced away. Nothing is to be outside the scope of the state, not even our dullest email or most inconsequential phone call. And the government expects us to indulge them in their righteous fantasy that all will be for the best, ignoring the fact that innocent people will end up being wrongly accused, that all but the dumbest of criminals will already have worked out how to avoid being detected and that data will leak with ease into the public domain. Still, it keeps the cops, spooks and prodnoses in a job and flatters the politicians they’re being serious.
Theresa May, the current Home Secretary (the latest in a long and egregious line of incompetents), seems bemused by unfavourable reaction to the draft bill: “I just don’t understand why some people might criticise these proposals,” she says, accusing them of being conspiracy theorists. If she doesn’t understand something as simple as this (and the fact that people are getting sick of politicians promising one thing then doing the opposite) I suggest she resign immediately and get a brain. Even better, leave politics altogether and take up a job in which she has no power or influence over anything. And take the rest of the damn crew with her so we can all be left alone to get on with our lives in peace.
