Britain Unveils Electronic Mass Surveillance Plan

How about PATROLLING THE STREETS!

NSA driftnet intercepts scoop up everything that goes through telco switching hubs and ISPs, and then it gets datamined and retained.

We all get "scored" for lots of things.

What's your algorithm?

then nobody would criticize their plan out of fear of looking like they're siding with those right-wingers! brilliant!

Only evil-doers May - right - and who do you clarify as an evil-doer- anyone who does not think exactly like you?

No we should be afraid, very afraid of this.

any government which calls itself "democratic" would seriously propose such a thing is monstrous. This is outright totalitarianism, if we agree that one of the most prominent features of a totalitarian state is ubiquitous police surveillance of the innocent, not only the guilty.

I have little doubt that somewhere Felix Dzerzhinsky and Heinrich Himmler are toasting each other with a glass of schnapps and having a good chuckle. That (formerly Great) Britain, after having expended much blood and treasure to defeat fascism and totalitarian ideologies in the 20th Century, would now in the 21st Century resort to the very tactics advocated and put into practice by the two aforementioned men, has got to be an example of supreme irony that is perhaps best appreciated by students of history. If the tragic history of the Nazis, the Bolsheviks and other assorted totalitarian and authoritarian governments has even remotely taught us anything, it's that tyranny always comes calling in the guise of public safety and order.

Oh, and Theresa May, if you're reading this (and I sincerely hope that one day it will it find its way into your inbox).....

......Fuck you. I hope you can rest happy knowing that your name shall go down in history along with those of Dzerzhinsky, Himmler, Lavrenty Beria, Ghenrik Yagoda, Hara Takashi, Kang Kek Iew (Comrade Duch - leader of the Santebal during the Khmer Rouge period in Cambodia) and many others, some of their names now lost to history. While you're not a mass-murderer, not yet at least, you've nonetheless made it far easier for your successors to utilize the power of Her Majesty's Government to potentially persecute their political opponents, despite whatever fatuous protestations you may offer to the contrary.

Madame Secretary, may you burn in Hell for your deliberate treason to not only everything the United Kingdom stood for but for your treachery to the very principles of freedom, liberty, and the rights of man.

They just want further to officialize and give legal veneer to the total surveillance state they have already created, to a worse extent than probably any other country. Orwell's vision reached Britain first after all.

And now they want to get more aggressive about it. Criminals! Conspiracy theorists! One dud bomb will allow them to ratchet up the rhetoric further.

You look at the police shows coming out of UK (like US), they are soooo celebrating this stuff.

Is there any uproar over this? Britain may have had the largest protests of all during the recent anti-austerity wave.

Never mind: I hear the Queen is a really old lady! Yay!

Imagine how many couples they will discover who are having affairs. They will find more stupid gossip to use against people than dangers to avert.

And as they do this, they will intimidate the British people into being just mindless servants of the state. That is the ultimate goal, the purpose of this sort of surveillance: making people feel that they have no privacy, that they have no right to exercise their wills.

You get what you pay for. This will end a lot of the creativity and energy that made the United Kingdom great. Before long, the entire country will be inhabited by heads-down, hands-in-their-pockets, very obedient, idiot-conformists.

That's what constantly being watched does to a person. Of course, it will reduce crime, but also art and self-expression of all kinds. Here's to the Queen -- and all her generals.

On edit, this will definitely end the great tradition of the British novel, to say nothing of the British mysteries. All of these stories will have to be set in the past and refer to the present overly domineering state discretely so as not to be offensive in metaphors from the past.

The British novel, British literature is dead as this law is implemented. Rid the world of illicit love and all crime and what do you have left? Some scientific treatises, but certainly no literature or action movies.

guess she didn't realize it was meant to be a cautionary tale, not a how-to guide...



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/lastenemy/index.html

on their "Public Servants?"