UK Establishment: Stupid Buggers

Posted on February 10, 2008
Filed Under Politics |

You know that the government’s obsession with collecting data, controlling people and ensuring that New Britain is the most surveilled upon state in the world has gone too far when it leads to the possibility of terrorists and rapists and paedophiles being put back on the streets.

It has happened before, of course, when Charles Clarke was Home Secretary and thousands of prisoners were released to continue their crime sprees in Britain because it was too much bother to deport them, even though that was a condition of their release. John Reid failed to correct this government sponsored crime licence, but these were essentially errors of incompetence. The machinery of state grinding to a halt because nobody could be bothered to fill in the forms and post the letters.

In comparison, the apparatus of New Britain’s banana republic junta of politicians, police and any other penpushing jobsworths is a well-oiled machine.

To put you in the picture of how lowly in the establishment’s administrative food chain you can be and still have the authority to spy on other citizens, The Guardian offers this:

The commissioner’s [interception of communications commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy] report is as loud a wake-up call as this country has ever had about the creeping growth of modern big brother methods. He details how surveillance powers have been handed not just to MI5, GCHQ and the police but also to Revenue and Customs, the fire service, the prisons, the food standards authorities, the environment agency, health service trusts, the Post Office and councils. In all, he says, nearly 800 different bodies have access powers of some sort over our communications. More than 250,000 requests were made in the first nine months of 2007: an astonishing thousand new snoops every day of the year.

So, if you thought it was just mighty ministers and senior police who could open your letters and listen to your telephone calls and then only if you were a seriously suspicious terrorist suspect, forget it. The trolley collector at Tesco is probably scanning your emails this minute.

All of which might be fine if you subscribe to the view that this is needed to fight The War on Terror and you are convinced that any threat the government concocts is worth losing your freedoms over, but would you be happy if it meant real criminal being released from jail?

After it emerged that counter-terrorism officers probably secretly recorded MP Sadiq Khan’s conversations with a constituent - terrorist suspect Babar Ahmad - in the Buckinghamshire prison of Woodhill in 2005 and 2006, it has been claimed that prisoners’ conversations, perhaps with their legal representatives, are routinely bugged.

The problem is, this obsession with monitoring everything everyone does, whether they are still wandering the streets apparently freely or when they are imprisoned, could have severe legal implications, always assuming that New Briatin will remain governed by the due process of recognisable laws for a year or two yet.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw has so far mumbled and bluffed and obfuscated his way through this minefield with all the adroitness of a bull in a china shop.

The BBC has this:

Shadow home secretary David Davis said he was writing to the Justice Secretary Jack Straw demanding a full-scale investigation and said ministers must have been aware.

“It is inconceivable that this action has taken place without ministerial approval,” he said.

“Whilst there can be reasons for eavesdropping on legal meetings, it is such a serious infringement of people’s rights that there has to be a very good reason.

“It can put the trial at risk which means that serious crimes may go unpunished.”

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said if the latest allegations were true, fundamental legal procedures have been breached.

“We need an immediate inquiry into exactly what is going on.

“If that confirms these allegations, I think it’s the most astonishing and foolish policy that is going to prove to be totally counterproductive and quite calamitous.”

‘Furious reaction’

Senior British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said if the claims were true, they could lead to violent offenders being released.

“The end result… is that these cases will have to be brought back to court and in my view the courts will react with such fury as a matter of principle, those whose conversations were bugged will have to be let out,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay said: “The only surprise I have is that people are surprised.

“I and others have tried to draw attention to the abuse of powers by senior police officers over recent years, often only to be mocked.

“In my view this indefensible situation arises from the cocktail of supine ministers and the total absence of any Parliamentary oversight of the security and intelligence services.”

One of the tricks which Nazi Germany used to keep the people cowed and terrified was to ensure that everyone, from children upwards, was informing on everyone else.

Expect the government and police to set up phone lines for you to do the same.

Oh, that one is already covered, apparently.

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