Monday 20 October 2008

More surveilance madness

In a similar vein to the previous post about censoring/filtering internet content clearly the government is intent on a two-pronged approach; they'll stop people seeing things they don't want and monitor what they do look at just in case they missed something. Oh, and we'll add to that by tracking your calls as well since these will now be tied to your identity.

Looks like there is going to be a thriving market in stolen phones, activated SIM cards, forged identity documents and a whole host of other things to help those people who really don't want their identity to be logged to avoid that happening.

Surely measures like this just make the problems they attempt to solve worse? If you aim to catch terrorists, for example, with a measure like this then you will likely only get the stupid/poor ones that don't think about this problem or can't afford to get around it. So that still leaves the clever/rich ones at large and presumably means that only that variety can survive. So we have a kind of evolution of terrorists - doesn't this seem like a bad thing?

I'm not sure what the alternative approach is but such mass monitoring seems like using a 100lb hammer to crap a nut!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The land of George Orwell seems to have a government that's intent on proving Mr Orwell right...

There's a tremendous over-reaction to the threat of terrorism. There's also the whole attitude that there's a "correct" view of some issue - both are embodied in this intrusive and unwarranted surveillance.

I've no doubt that the various civil rights groups will shout, and will be monitored all the more closely.

Unfortunately, no one can sue the government. And that truly despicable bit of bureaucratic CYA - the Official Secrets Act - means that no one has a right to know what the government is doing, after it starts censoring and monitoring.

What a mess! For the land that invented freedom, and the legislative concept of privacy - it's a disgrace! Whatever happened to the idea that an Englishman's home was his castle? These days, it's a pile of rubble, being picked over by anonymous government monitors.

Carolyn Ann

PS Not that anywhere else seems to be any better!