It was with great irony and despicable deceit that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was commemorating the fall of communism in Berlin on Monday. In his remarks, he insisted that the tide of history was moving towards our “best hopes,” and praised the people who helped end tyranny and bring down the wall.
Too bad it was all poppycock.
Simultaneously, Brown’s government back in London was announcing its plans for the rather innocuous sounding “Interception Modernisation Programme,” which is a law that grants the British government access to the phone records, emails, and web searches of its citize… er, subjects.
To be clear, ALL European Union member states, including the UK, are already required by EU Directive 2006/24/EC to retain private electronic data for a period of 6 to 12 months. The information that governments must collect includes the date, time, duration, source, destination, and device information of all electronic communication, to include phone and email.
I came face to face with this directive while attempting to use a public internet terminal in Italy earlier this year– the attendant was required to make a copy of my passport, and I was notified that my web activity would be logged. Needless to say, I politely declined.
Despite these utterly draconian measures, the British government believes that the EU directive does not go far enough.
Now, the Interception Modernisation Programme plans to force all electronic communication providers (wireless companies, cable companies, internet service providers, etc.) to keep a record of every communication by every customer for a period of 1-year, and make the data available to 653 public agencies.
The most insulting part about the program is that the communication providers will be reimbursed for this inconvenience at taxpayer expense to the tune of about $360 million each year.
The UK turned into a surveillance state long ago… and unfortunately the trend is getting worse, not better.
There are legions of yellow vested government do-gooders in constant presence across Britain’s cities without any apparent mission other than to exist and take notice.
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