MPs to probe Surveillance Society

According to Auntie, the poachers are about to check up on the er, poachers…

An inquiry into the growing use of surveillance in society is to be held by an influential committee of MPs.

The problem, of course, is that it is MPs who voted for the oppressive surveillance society in the first place.

It is thought the inquiry will include the impact of identity cards, the expansion of the DNA database and the large rise in the use of CCTV cameras.

Well, indeed. But, er, shouldn’t they have looked at this before they decided that spying on our every move was a jolly good wheeze? Basher has some words on the subject, as one would expect:

Shadow home secretary David Davis said the move was welcome, adding: “Under Labour we have progressively moved towards a surveillance society with the government’s obsession with ID cards and the DNA database being just two examples.”

“What is extremely sinister however is that Labour refuses to be straight about their intentions.”

Actually, I’d have thought their intentions are fairly obvious as one of their ardent apologists makes plain:

I think we should track everyone and put their location on the internet for all to see (this way we can watch the watchers), we should DNA test all babies at birth and then every rapist/murderer/criminal etc would be caught first time (and know they can’t get away with it). I know it sounds horrible that nobody could lie about their location and partake in criminal activity and easily get away with it- but what would be really horrible are all the victims who suffer because we shy away from using available technology that would protect them.

Read it and weep.

They don’t trust us to behave without our every moment being catalogued by the state, without some petty bureaucrat analysing our identity and deciding whether we are upright decent citizens or non persons. And, of course, refusniks are criminals or mentally ill (why else would we object to our privacy being invaded?) – so we can be locked up or sectioned by the bastards.

An author of the report, by a group of academics called the Surveillance Studies network, said the UK was “the most surveilled country” of all the industrialised Western states.

Sounds about right.

It coincided with a publication by the human rights group Privacy International suggesting Britain is the worst Western democracy at protecting individual privacy

Indeed. It makes one ashamed to be British and appalled that people can believe that this surveillance is a good thing. If it is, why did the good people of East Germany rush to the west in droves, why did they demolish the Berlin wall? Was it because they hated the constant surveillance by the state “for their own good” or were they just criminals and nutters? Clearly they didn’t know when they were well off.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said concerns he had raised two years previously, had become a reality.

And some of us repeated his warnings, some of us heeded what he was saying, some of us have real concerns about liberty – you know, that concept my grandparents’ generation went to war for.

“We’ve got to say where do we want the lines to be drawn? How much do we want to have surveillance changing the nature of society in a democratic nation?,” he told the BBC.

Frankly Richard old bean, that line was drawn a long time ago and this obnoxious government trampled all over it as soon as they had a suitable excuse. Thanks a bunch Osama.

He added Britain had to “rise to the challenges” of the “massive social and technological advances” of the previous few decades.

We could start by rising few heads on spikes outside Traitor’s Gate.