I’ve just had this article posted on the Index on Censorship site
..we need to stand up against the plans because even if the current proposals can be justified as a proportionate measure –– and remember that only details of sender and receiver are being stored, not the content of the messages themselves –– mission creep is inevitable.
Powers granted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act which we were told were needed to investigate serious crime and catch terrorists have been used to determine whether parents are really living in the catchment area of a popular school, something that is not actually illegal under the act as passed.
Read the whole piece, and it’s worth looking at Mike Butcher’s rant too.
Regrettably, I cannot remember, or dig out from my notes, Georg Simmel’s observation that, by around 1900, the state had become an object of surveillance, and the people had become private – in contrast to the opacity of the state and the surveillance of the people 100 years before. The difference 100 years (more) can make.
But it seems au point (Watching Me, Watching You – with appropriate acknowldgement to ‘Alan Partridge’, our neighbour in Norwich – bizarrely, also the real name of the vicar down the street in Ely).