LucasH

If you've not been under a rock for the past week, you would have noticed all the talk in the media about the Home Office's new surveillance scheme . I figured this is an important issue to Britain right now, so of course, I should weigh-in.

When a government perceives a threat, they need to be seen (by the people) to counter it. In doing so, however, they often go further than they need to, in order to gain some extra power for themselves. In a climate of fear, people are more willing to have their civil liberties intruded upon, that's why certain countries, *cough* America *cough*, attempt to create a climate of fear all the time. That should change with ol' George W. out of the picture, but you can still see my point.

I sit here and look at the notion of the government tracking all my phone calls, I am well aware that call recording does already go on, but not of everyone in the nation, and all that information is not kept in one big database. And let me tell you, no database, no database, is entirely secure these days. I am not being all conspiracy theory believer here, I just know that slip ups occur, that hackers for some reason try their hand at breaking through whatever firewalls and security measures the government creates, and sometimes freak occurrences just happen. Also, people's information could be used inappropriately, and that is something that ought to be considered.

Now, a notion occurs to me... why not, oh, say, only monitor those who are suspicious or dealing with suspicious persons? Nooo, lets track everyone in the entire nation! There is also call logging , which makes me laugh. I laugh at the thought of some schmuck logging the data from my calls. "Well, Sir, it seems he can order Chinese food in under 30 seconds, and that's about it."

I am aware that the threat to the UK has become more serious than ever before, but does the government really think we are going to fall for this? Go along with this sort of whole-scale phone, e-mail, and net activity logging? Did they not think that the Brits wouldn't look to what has happened in the US, once that kind of power has been granted to the government, it is extremely difficult to retract. Frankly, I think the idea is preposterous.