YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE MONITORED FOR READING THIS BLOG

There is something both creepy and deeply worrying about the coalition Government’s new plans for spying on the people of the UK. They want to monitor where all e-mails are being sent, from who to whom, all the blogs and web-sites we read and calls we make.

Although the contents of our e-mails will not be read, unless a warrant to read them is issued by a court, the state will be watching each and every one of us and monitoring who we are in contact with – there is something frighteningly Orwellian about this proposal, which will give a massive amount of power to MI5.

The campaigning organisation, NO2ID, has put out a press release in which they state: “So much for civil liberties - coalition puts “a bug in every living room”

They warn that the government plans to force internet service providers to keep records of all browsing, email, gaming and chat use, and to make those records available to the authorities. It is now revealed the plan is to go further and allow real time snooping by the intelligence services. It will take place without a warrant, as most official surveillance already does.

NO2ID has previously pointed out that this scheme is “leapfrogging China” and will ensure Britain remains the most watched society on earth.

The coalition government appears to have reversed its position on privacy against the database state. This news follows a little-reported announcement by Francis Maude that the coalition will ‘look again’ at broad data-sharing powers for government bodies abandoned by Jack Straw in 2009. Those plans would have allowed ministers to set aside confidentiality whenever it was convenient to them to use any information held about members of the public for new purposes.

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID said: “Astonishing brass neck from the Home Office, attempting to feed us reheated leftovers from the authoritarian end of the Blair administration. It is not very far from a bug in every living room that can be turned on and turned off at official whim. Whatever you are doing online, whoever you are in contact with, you will never know when you are being watched. And nobody else will either, because none of it will need a warrant.

“Put aside privacy - and the government has - the scheme is an astonishing waste of money. What problem does it solve that is worth billions?”

However, as always when there is draconian and unpleasant moves ahead, the EU is lurking somewhere in the background, as Richard North on the informative EU Referendum blog points out, including the actual EU directive which is the very reason the coalition has begun this course of state snooping. As Richard states on his blog: “Now this may be a coincidence, but don't we have a Data Retention Directive, otherwise known as Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006?”

As the EU inevitably becomes more loathed, as it digs a hole deeper and deeper for itself as the collapsing euro creates poverty and fiscal disaster for millions, it will also become more neurotic than it already is and will want to monitor everyone in its paranoia – and our Government is helping the EU to take control of our lives.

So much so for the hypocritical and disgraceful Liberal Democrats who supported NO2ID against the imposition if ID cards and its campaign to retain our personal freedom. When it comes to the supporting its EU, as far as the Labour, Tories and Liberal Democrats go, all principals and election promises go out of the window.

Soon this blog will carry a warning, ‘You are about to be monitored for reading this blog.