First there was public execration at local councils fining people for dropping sausage roll crumbs. Then there was uproar as town hall busybodies used anti-terrorist legislation to snoop on dog walkers. These two incredible encroachments into individual private space resembled an overwhelming show of force from the state.
Now the government plan to track every text message, every email and every telephone conversation you make or receive. Communication, it seems, is now treated with suspicion by a government George Orwell warned us about.
Without a single law being passed to mandate this frogmarch into our private lives, the government has already spent £1billion of taxpayers’ money preparing the super-database, clearly showing contempt for parliamentary process. The wheels are in motion for the government to be forever over your shoulder, suspecting you of the worse.
Yet with the sheer volume of text messages, emails and telephone conversations made, how does the government expect to monitor every single communiqué? Are we to be subject to bureaucratic whim, where human error can mean an intense investigation causing any amount of stress or harm? Or are we to be governed by machine and voice recognition systems? Either way, it’s a sinister scenario whichever option is pursued.
What we need to do as a movement for lower taxes and smaller government is to write, lobby even – how appropriate – email the politicians to get them to stop this dead in its tracks. At a rough cost of £12 billion it bears a price we cannot afford financially, well aside from the clear cost to our civil liberties. You can write to your MP at this following website.
Let them know that, like ID cards, this is another costly incursion into our private lives that you think the government should not be using your money to pay for!