Quote: A Horseradish @ 4th May 2015, 5:07 PM BST
I read a lot of this sort of thing from the David Davis brigade and wonder if there isn't a bit too much fretting. Perhaps for a change we could have some concrete examples, eg is the problem with cameras everywhere you turn that they get in the way of dogging? I'm being half serious on this policy point.
Well, we've had the filters. That's very concrete.
The Tory manifesto now contains a promise on adult websites. Labour concurs.
And with those two in cahoots, a majority is guaranteed either way.
If we see how the filters were designed to catch much more material than was claimed as the initial intention and if we see what is being put in place (ATVOD using BBFC rulings, BBFC now also being placed in charge of music or sports videos, etc) you can see where we're heading.
Now look at the various prevailing agendas in this sphere of current politics and it sends shivers down your spine.
As for cameras everywhere, it's hardly a matter of dogging. It's about the steady creep of the state.
Whereas one once might have been granted parliamentary permission to install cameras on motorways to oversee traffic, no one later bothered ever to ask for permission to link them with number plate recognising software. One simply did it.
The exponential increase of powers which derives from this is self-evident.
A traffic management measure suddenly becomes a tool by which to track and log movement of individual cars.
Hell, in Middlesbrough they even installed speakers to bark out orders at people from the camera operations room.
I think it might also have been Middlesbrough where they installed microphones in the supposed belief that they might pick up conversations of terrorists in public spaces. One can't really make it up.
Do not dismiss the David Davis agenda too lightly.
It took a great deal to get a hardliner like Davis to break with the easy 'law and order' rhetoric.
Blair readily locked suspects up without trial, or without even disclosing to them their supposed crime. Magna Carta is not worth that much anymore. (Yep, she died in vain.)
What is clear is that we should not trust the motives of the political elite on civil liberties. Their recent track record is more than dubious.
