I caught a hint of a glimpse of a headline somewhere yesterday while on the move. It simply raised the question of how we, citizens of a democratic country, would have responded several decades ago to the suggestion that every individual would carry around on his or her person a tracking device. It sounds absurd, doesn't it? We would reject such a notion as being an infringement of personal privacy and a seriously worrying intrusion by the state (or other powers).
Well, like many things, we allow it to happen because rather than be presented to us as a policy, it simply creeps up incrementally as 'technological development'. So, now, without really thinking a great deal about it, we live in a surveillance state, whereby the 'powers' can know where I am, what I am buying, who I am texting/phoning, which websites I am perusing, where I am driving, who I am with, and so on. CCTV, road cameras, debit/credit cards, social media, mobile signal triangulation, store cards, etc. – the mere fact of this coverage makes any idea of privacy seem a little ironic (in an Orwellian, 1984 sense).
So, I was amused to read this morning's (always) excellent Newsbiscuit piece about GCHQ.
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Nick Baines's Blog 
August 7, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Reblogged this on hungarywolf.
August 7, 2013 at 4:36 pm
In 1961 or 2 I marched on part of each of the three days of the annual CND march, which was traditionally from Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square. I was 14, somewhat precocious, earned enough money from part time jobs to spend it on fares if I so wished. My parents trusted me, I’d run away from home a couple of times, and not come to harm.
On the first or second day I was asked by a couple of men for my name, address & trades union and gave them my highly individual name, when a young couple who’d tried to take me under their wing interrupted and said these were secret police, or some such. They moved on, not wanting to be mobbed.
Much later I worked in a security sensitive position which required security clearance. The incident from the early ’60s was on my file I gathered. Likewise during the Miners’ Strike I was active in support of miners’ families in an area containing a port through which possibly coal might have been imported. The local Tory MP and I were on good terms. He claimed to have checked out several of us who might have arranged a blockade of the port, ineptly no doubt. Claimed to have seen my file. I have doubts, people like to wind up their political opponents.
No harm ever came to me as a consequence of giving my name to MI5(?).
Yet since Orwell’s death in 1950 the UK’s media has been captured for right wing ideas via purchases by foreign based billionaires, and thence the UK’s economic and political agendas. We should require that owners and operators of our national media live here and pay tax here, to maximise their shared interests with the rest of we Brits.
I’m not in the slightest worried about vast mega mega oodles of records of predominantly trivial telecoms. These may well only be assessed very selectively to forfend terrorists, criminals.
On a separate point, they should not be sold to any foreign power. Nor should GCHQ be funded by non British sources. Joint operations are one thing, subservience another. Satellite states do not fuction well.
On a similar note I’d rather my local MP didn’t repeatedly visit the Reagan Library in the USA. He’s one of those who imagines the EU is detrimental to Britain’s interests. Lord Ashcroft, who took ten years to begin to pay tax here after agreeing it as a condition of his ennoblement, approves of him very much.
I wonder if the interests of those associated with the far right in America share our interests, or simply wish to share ownership and make profits out of the NHS etc?
August 9, 2013 at 9:09 pm
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