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.
I think you are right, there does seem to be a data grab mentality within Government at times.
“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.”
Surely their age, to a certain degree is irrelevant? The key parameter should be innocence surely?
Do you consider a 16 year old guilty of assault show not have their DNA held, but an innocent 19 year old should?
I am sure you don’t, I just wanted to make the point about innocence being the measuring stick, not age.
Despite my clear support of many of the issues raised by the convention of modern liberty; I find the DNA database slightly unique. I cannot fathom a suitable response to a family who have had the murder of the family member solved via the DNA database.
Consider the gentleman who was exonerated for a crime he didn’t commit recently – without DNA being taken and stored, he would be rotting in jail.
Food for thought.
Bethan with respect to your being startled by this news. Believe me the technology has been around for a very long time and there is no way it has not been used. We are being monitored 24 hours a day with CCTV, Satelite tracking with mobile and land phones they can detect where we are from them and listen to our conversations, watching our internet use, our shopping habits, banking, credit/debit card use, health problems, benefit claims. There is not one aspect of any of our lives, including AMs and MPS that they can not get information about and most probably already containing it.
All they are doing by announcing this is to make it legal and acceptable, because up till now it isn’t, then they can have it all stored in one place, with an army of people employed to collect and collate.
Fortunately, Facebook etc aren’t hosted in the UK, so aren’t subject to UK law. Of course, if the UK govt set up a snooping deal with the US govt there is little that could be done about it. But blindly harvesting Facebook details is against Facebook’s TermsOfService and would be fought by the company (unless over-ruled by US “national security” law)
This governement has gone crazy.I wonder who is advising them on such matters.
What on earth would be the cost of collecting keeping and up dating all this personal and trivial for the most part, data. You really would think they had more important and relevant issues to be addressing.
It really is becoming Gordon Clown time.
Perhaps the council are so intent on pushing this through because the school is no longer situated in Rhydfelin?? Surely you and the other people who are kicking up such a fuss about a school name have other, more pressing issues at hand?