THE GUARDIAN: It seems whoever is in government, grandiose ambitions of the security state remain – and the potential for harm is great
When the Liberals and Conservatives delivered the first coalition government since the war, they bound themselves together in the language of civil liberties.
Early signs were encouraging: Labour's controversial ID card scheme was scrapped and the enticingly titled protection of freedoms bill was conceived. But the romance was rocky. Unsafe and unfair control orders remained (albeit perfumed as terrorism prevention and investigation measures) and seductive promises of extradition reform failed to materialise.
Now the honeymoon appears well and truly over, thanks no doubt to some "spooky" extramarital intervention. Hot on the heels of the secret justice green paper – which seeks to shut claimants out of their own cases against the state to defend the "public interest" – comes a major expansion of powers to monitor the phone calls, emails and website visits of every person in the UK.
Next month's Queen's speech is expected to include legislation instructing internet service providers to install hardware that would give the government's electronic listening agency, GCHQ, increased access to communications data.
The ask is greedier than ever before, and the proposed data collection vast. Everyone will be affected, irrespective of any suspicion, just in case the information might prove useful one day. This is the blanket surveillance of an entire population. Such industrial-scale snooping will inevitably lead to discrimination. Remember ethnic minorities' experience of stop-and-search without suspicion? There will be nothing to prevent the creation of "mining databases": fishing expeditions based on certain keywords linked solely to clumsy stereotypes rather than genuine and reasonable suspicion of individual wrongdoing. » | Isabella Sankey | Tuesday, April 03, 2012
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