Sunday 13 July 2014

Big Brother Emergency

(Illustration by Ryan Carr)
It's funny how the word "emergency" evokes such a complex and extensive response in mass consciousness; the authorities know this and that's why they use it so cleverly. The UK Cameron Government plc has announced that it is introducing "emergency" measures to give police and intelligence services greater ability to monitor the electronic communications of British citizens. Cameron has said: "I think the public should be worried if we didn't act. As Prime Minster, I'm standing here and saying very clearly that if we don't do anything our ability to solve serious crimes... and our ability to prevent terrorist acts will be radically reduced... We need to legislate very rapidly". How convenient! We only get to debate on whether these actions are right or wrong when they've already been passed into law. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28237111. As always, this has been justified by the need to tackle such undesirables as paedophiles, serious criminals and terrorists. How does this compute when the worst examples I can image in all three of those categories appear to be involved in the very same institutions demanding these emergency powers to tackle them?
Is it just a coincidence that this announcement was made a few days after a set of news stories like this? See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28147487 and: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28223150.

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