Social Network snooping is Big Brother gone mad
Posted on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 4:02pm
5 responses
I have been startled by reports today of the UK government’s proposals to snoop on social networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook and then store records of exchanges and profiles on a Home Office database. What’s more, it’s even being suggested that the Government will employ a private company to maintain such a database.
These proposals have rightly been branded as a government ‘snooping charter.’ Indeed, this is yet another example in a long series of New Labour’s infringement on people’s privacy and human rights. Last year I exposed the number of DNA samples held by police in Wales that belong to people under the age of 18 – I discovered a staggering 64,000 such samples were held.
We have of course become well aware of the government’s determination to detain terror suspects for lengthy periods without charges being brought against them. When we add to the equation the issue of compulsory ID cards – not just costly but surely absurdly ineffective – it reads as a startling narrative of the Labour government.
The past decade or so has clearly not been a good period in the history civil liberties in the UK.
The latest proposals are intrusive and mean that Whitehall bureaucrats will be snooping through personal information such as religious and political views and sexual orientation. I have written to the Justice Secretary Jack Straw calling for these plans to be ditched, but expect, as usual, the Labour government will steam-roller ahead.
And on the topic of steam-rolling, I will be joining pupils and parents from Ysgol Rhydfelen this evening as they try and prevent the council from imposing a name-change on that school. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it was at Rhydfelen that I received my secondary education and I’m opposed to its renaming. The pupils don’t want a name-change, the parents don’t want a name-change. I cannot fathom why the council seem so intent on pushing this through.
