Private firm may track all email and calls

‘Hellhouse’ of personal data will be created, warns former DPP

The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone’s calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.

A cabinet decision to put the management of the multibillion pound database of all UK communications traffic into private hands would be accompanied by tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses.

But in his strongest criticism yet of the superdatabase, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, who has firsthand experience of working with intelligence and law enforcement agencies, told the Guardian such assurances would prove worthless in the long run and warned it would prove a “hellhouse” of personal private information.

“Authorisations for access might be written into statute. The most senior ministers and officials might be designated as scrutineers. But none of this means anything,” said Macdonald. “All history tells us that reassurances like these are worthless in the long run. In the first security crisis the locks would loosen.”

Read morePrivate firm may track all email and calls

Big Brother CCTV to spy on pupils aged four – complete with CPS evidence kit

    Tim Loughton
    Shadow Children’s Minister Tim Loughton is chairman of Classwatch

    Schools have installed CCTV cameras and microphones in classrooms to watch and listen to pupils as young as four.

    The Big Brother-style surveillance is being marketed as a way to identify pupils disrupting lessons when teachers’ backs are turned.

    Classwatch, the firm behind the system, says its devices can be set up to record everything that goes on in a classroom 24 hours a day and used to compile ‘evidence’ of wrongdoing.

    The equipment is sold with Crown Prosecution Service-approved evidence bags to store material to be used in court cases.

    The microphones and cameras can be used during lessons and when a classroom is unattended, such as during lunch breaks.

    But data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner has warned the surveillance may be illegal and demanded to know why primary and secondary schools are using this kind of sophisticated equipment to watch children.

    Read moreBig Brother CCTV to spy on pupils aged four – complete with CPS evidence kit

    Journalists Worry ‘Big Brother Law’ Will Kill Press Freedom


    German journalists may soon lose certain legal protections. AP

    A new law working its way toward passage in Germany has journalists worried. Certain provisions, they say, could eliminate the ability for reporters to protect their sources. Still, the measure is likely to go into effect early next year.

    It has been called the “Big Brother” law in the German media due to its provisions allowing online and telephone surveillance. The Interior Ministry in Berlin describes it as a necessary step to protect the country from the dangers of international terrorism.

    But journalists in Germany see the bill — currently in the parliament’s arbitration committee after having failed to get through the country’s upper legislative chamber, the Bundesrat, in November — in a different light. They are concerned the law would make it much easier for investigators to spy on reporters without their knowledge, giving the state access to both their computer files and their sources. That, they say, represents an unacceptable attack on freedom of the press in Germany. Publishers, journalists and media lawyers are up in arms.

    This law “is one in a series of so-called security laws that have one thing in common: They endanger the freedom of the press and especially investigative journalism,” Wolfgang Krach, managing editor of the influential daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, told SPIEGEL. “This is not a case of a profession selfishly looking for extra privileges. Rather, journalists want to be conferred the rights guaranteed them by the constitution and to be able to fulfil their role unhindered.”

    Read moreJournalists Worry ‘Big Brother Law’ Will Kill Press Freedom

    Police charged £9m by phone firms to use tracking data, prompting calls for ‘free access’

    mobile phone
    Police forces are spending up to £9m every year to access details of phone records (Posed by model)

    Mobile phone firms have been accused of cashing in on crime and terror after charging the police £8.7million a year to access data tracking information.

    The companies keep records of the times, dates, duration of mobile phone calls and the numbers contacted but not the actual content of conversations.

    They also hold crucial information about the whereabouts of a mobile phone at any given time – which can be accessed by the police to build up a picture of a suspect’s movements.

    The details were crucial in the conviction of Soham murderer Ian Huntley and Ipswich prostitute-killer Steve Wright and in identifying those involved in the failed 21/7 terrorist plots in London.

    But Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile charge a fee for seeing the data – with the cost running at about £170,000 a week.

    This is in addition to £8million the Home Office already pays telecoms firms to store information on their customers for at least a year so it is available to the police and MI5.

    Police can see the phone records without having to apply to the courts, with senior offices issuing a Section 22 notice under the powerful Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

    The process has become an everyday part of police inquiries and many forces and MI5 have automated systems to retrieve mobile data – prompting calls for the service to be free of charge.

    Last year, Section 22 powers were exercised more than 500,000 times.

    Read morePolice charged £9m by phone firms to use tracking data, prompting calls for ‘free access’

    Big Brother police to get war-time power to demand ID in the street – on pain of sending you to jail

    “No reasonable cause or suspicion is required, and checks can be carried out ‘in country’ – not just at borders.”

    “A second clause says that people who are stopped ‘must produce a valid identity document if required to do so by the Secretary of State’. Failure to do so would be a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 51 weeks in jail or a £5,000 fine.”

    The New World Order is closing in on you. How many of you are still laughing at David Icke now?

    Wait until they introduce the microchip for you. It is already here:
    Met Police officers to be ‘microchipped’ by top brass in Big Brother style tracking scheme:
    Every single Metropolitan police officer to be be ‘microchipped’….
    …there will not be any choice about wearing one.

    And it causes cancer: CASPIAN RELEASES MICROCHIP CANCER REPORT

    The following article is a must read.
    ________________________________________________________________________

    Checks: Police will be able to demand ID from people at any time
    Checks: Police will be able to demand ID from people at any time (file picture)

    State officials are to be given powers previously reserved for times of war to demand a person’s proof of identity at any time.

    Anybody who refuses the Big Brother demand could face arrest and a possible prison sentence.

    The new rules come in legislation unveiled in today’s Queen’s Speech.

    They are presented as a crackdown on illegal immigration, but lawyers say they could be applied to anybody who has ever been outside the UK, even on holiday.

    The civil rights group Liberty, which analysed clauses from the new Immigration and Citizenship Bill, called them an attempt to introduce compulsory ID cards by the back door.

    The move would effectively take Britain back to the Second World War, when people were stopped and asked to ‘show their papers’.

    Liberty said: ‘Powers to examine identity documents, previously thought to apply only at ports of entry, will be extended to criminalise anyone in Britain who has ever left the country and fails to produce identity papers upon demand.

    ‘We believe that the catch-all remit of this power is disproportionate and that its enactment would not only damage community relations but represent a fundamental shift in the relationship between the State and those present in the UK.’

    One broadly-drafted clause would permit checks on anyone who has ever entered the UK – whether recently or years earlier.
    Officials, who could be police or immigration officers, will be able to stop anyone to establish if they need permission to be here, if they have it, and whether it should be cancelled.

    No reasonable cause or suspicion is required, and checks can be carried out ‘in country’ – not just at borders.

    The law would apply to British citizens and foreign nationals, according to Liberty’s lawyers. The only people who would be exempt are the tiny minority who have never been abroad on holiday or business.

    A second clause says that people who are stopped ‘must produce a valid identity document if required to do so by the Secretary of State’. Failure to do so would be a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 51 weeks in jail or a £5,000 fine.

    Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti Tory Mp Damian Green leaving his Acton Home this morning.
    Opposed: Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti (left) and Tory MP Damian Green (right) both spoke out about the new powers

    Read moreBig Brother police to get war-time power to demand ID in the street – on pain of sending you to jail

    After banning YouTube, military launches TroopTube

    SEATTLE – The U.S. military, with help from Seattle startup Delve Networks, has launched a video-sharing Web site for troops, their families and supporters, a year and a half after restricting access to YouTube and other video sites.

    TroopTube, as the new site is called, lets people register as members of one of the branches of the armed forces, family, civilian Defense Department employees or supporters. Members can upload personal videos from anywhere with an Internet connection, but a Pentagon employee screens each for taste, copyright violations and national security issues.

    Read moreAfter banning YouTube, military launches TroopTube

    The cost of resisting China’s Big Brother

    CHINA: Clampdown on activists who expose surveillance through new technology

    “WE HAVEN’T seen you before. Which media are you from?” a middle-aged woman asked a tall man operating a video camera outside a Beijing court.

    “I’m from an independent newspaper,” the videographer replied with a slight smile on his face. The woman and her friend, who were queueing to take documents into the court, chuckled after hearing a statement that they all knew was false. “He’s police,” one of the women said a few minutes later.

    The exchange outside the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court was a rare moment of levity in the normally serious, sometimes violent business of monitoring and controlling rights activists, dissidents, independent religious leaders, separatists and others deemed a threat to China’s state security.

    Related article: China: Police State 2.0 is Ready for Export

    The plain-clothes police officer was taking footage of petitioners, journalists, lawyers and supporters of dissident Hu Jia, who was sentenced that day in April to three and a half years in prison for subversion. “Surveillance is both overt and insidious,” said Phelim Kine, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. Overt surveillance in China is used “both to intimidate, and as a lesson to the neighbours”, Kine said.

    Hu won the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought last month. He and fellow activist Gao Zhisheng were also nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Hu, 35, is the most prominent of a growing number of activists who have tried to reflect the intense glare of state surveillance back at those trying to monitor and control them.

    The activists’ photographs, video, transcripts and diaries, usually distributed via the internet, have given outsiders rare glimpses into surveillance and abuses of power by China’s vast public security network. China tolerates some local activism but it confronts those who begin to operate at a national or international level. The relatively few national-level activists who have mastered the use of the internet and digital technology like Hu and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, are “desperately outnumbered” by the people watching them, Kine said.

    “It tells you that those people like Hu Jia, who do master the technology and get the message out, are prey to retribution,” Kine. “What you see in China is that anyone who reaches a certain level of prominence, those people face serious consequences,” he said.

    Read moreThe cost of resisting China’s Big Brother

    Government black boxes will collect every email

    Home Office says all data from web could be stored in giant government database

    Internet “black boxes” will be used to collect every email and web visit in the UK under the Government’s plans for a giant “big brother” database, The Independent has learnt.

    Home Office officials have told senior figures from the internet and telecommunications industries that the “black box” technology could automatically retain and store raw data from the web before transferring it to a giant central database controlled by the Government.

    Plans to create a database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK have provoked a huge public outcry. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, described it as “step too far” and the Government’s own terrorism watchdog said that as a “raw idea” it was “awful”.

    Read moreGovernment black boxes will collect every email

    National road toll devices to be tested by drivers next year

    Trial could lead to £1.30-a-mile charges

    Hundreds of drivers are being recruited to take part in government-funded road-pricing trials that could result in charges of up to £1.30 a mile on the most congested roads.

    The test runs will start early next year in four locations and will involve fitting a satellite-tracking device to the vehicles of volunteers. An on-board unit will automatically deduct payments from a shadow account set up in the driver’s name.

    Paul Clark, the Transport Minister, confirmed yesterday that the trials would proceed despite previous statements from the Government suggesting that it had abandoned the idea of a national road-pricing scheme. In 2004 a feasibility study considered a range of possible prices, up to £1.30 a mile. It said that the highest rate “would be paid by only 0.5 per cent of traffic”.

    The on-board unit could be used to collect all road charges, such as congestion charges in London and Manchester and tolls for crossing bridges and using new lanes on motorways.

    In the longer term the technology could be used to introduce pricing on all roads, with the price varying according to the time of day, direction of travel and the level of congestion.

    Drivers would use the internet to check all their payments on a single bill. They would choose whether the bill showed where they had travelled or simply the amounts they had paid.

    Read moreNational road toll devices to be tested by drivers next year

    Darpa Wants to See Inside Your House

    The Pentagon wants to be able to peer inside your apartment building — picking out where all the major rooms, stairways, and dens of evil-doers are.

    The U.S. military is getting better and better at spotting its enemies, when they’re roaming around the streets. But once those foes duck into houses, they become a whole lot harder to spot. That’s why Darpa, the Defense Department’s way-out research arm, is looking to develop a suite of tools for “external sensing deep inside buildings.” The ultimate goal of this Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR) project: “reverse the adversaries’ advantage of urban familiarity and sanctuary and provide U.S. Forces with complete above- and below-ground awareness.”

    By the end of the project, Darpa wants a set of technologies that can see into a 10-story building with a two-level basement in a “high-density urban block” — and produce a kind of digital blueprint of the place. Using sensors mounted on backpacks, vehicles, or aircraft, the HIBR gear would, hopefully, be able to pick out every room, wall, stairway, and basement in the building — as well as all of the “electrical, plumbing, and installation systems.”

    Darpa doesn’t come out and say it openly. But it appears that the agency wants these HIBR gadgets to be able to track the people inside these buildings, as well. Why else would these sensors be required to “provide real-time updates” once U.S. troops enter the building? Perhaps there’s more about the people-spotting tech, in the “classified appendix” to HIBR’s request for proposals.

    Read moreDarpa Wants to See Inside Your House

    Sir Ken Macdonald: Centuries of British freedoms being broken by security state

    Centuries of British civil liberties risk being broken by the relentless pressure from the ‘security state’, the country’s top prosecutor has warned.

    Outgoing Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald warned that the expansion of technology by the state into everyday life could create a world future generations “can’t bear”.

    In his wide-ranging speech, Sir Ken appeared to condemn a series of key Government policies, attacking terrorism proposals – including 42 day detention – identity card plans and the “paraphernalia of paranoia”.

    Instead, he said, the Government should insist that “our rights are priceless” and that: “The best way to face down those threats is to strengthen our institutions rather than to degrade them.”

    The intervention will be seen as a significant setback to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who last week saw her plans to lock up terror suspects for 42 days before being charged thrown out by the House of Lords.

    It is also a blow to Miss Smith’s plans for a super-database to record the details of millions of people’s online presence, including emails, SMS messages and Facebook profiles as well as the controversial identity card programme.

    Sir Ken chose to issue his tough warning about the perils of the “Big Brother” state in his final speech as DPP, days before he leaves his post at the end of this month.

    He warned that MPs should “take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can’t bear”.

    Sir Ken, who has held the post for the past five years, said: “We need to take very great care not to fall into a way of life in which freedom’s back is broken by the relentless pressure of a security State.

    “Technology gives the State enormous powers of access to knowledge and information about each of us, and the ability to collect and store it at will.”

    Read moreSir Ken Macdonald: Centuries of British freedoms being broken by security state

    Paris to quadruple number of CCTV cameras

    Paris will quadruple the number of closed-circuit police cameras in its streets by the end of next year, after President Nicolas Sarkozy’s promise to emulate London in an attempt to track crime and terrorism threats.

    While the Paris metro and rail networks already operate around 9,500 CCTV devices, police have only 330 at their disposal to survey outside public areas. The new plan, dubbed “A Thousand Cameras for Paris”, will raise that number to more than 1,200 – with most installed in high-risk areas and outside railway and underground stations.

    The figure is still small compared with London, where each citizen is caught on average several hundred times a day. Britain has about four million closed-circuit security cameras compared with France’s 340,000.

    The CCTV drive follows Mr Sarkozy’s pledge last autumn to follow London’s surveillance lead. “I am very impressed by the efficiency of the British police thanks to this network of cameras,” the French president said. “In my mind, there is no contradiction between respecting individual freedoms and the installation of cameras to protect everyone’s security.”

    Read moreParis to quadruple number of CCTV cameras

    Live CCTV on buses to be tested


    Live CCTV launched on buses

    A six-month trial of live CCTV on a London bus route has begun.

    London Mayor Boris Johnson announced that the technology had been installed on 21 double-decker buses on a north London route.

    The real-time images will be beamed to a control room manned by Transport for London (TfL) and police.

    The trial will be monitored to determine whether live images can help transport staff deal with disorder more effectively.

    Mr Johnson said: “I am determined to banish the sad minority of hoodlums and trouble makers that have blighted our buses.

    “Having the facility to access live pictures from buses travelling around the capital will mean our bus controllers can play a far more effective role in sending police officers to sort out troublemakers.

    “If this trial is successful then we will consider rolling out the system on other routes as part of our campaign to stamp out the casual disorder that led to a culture of fear on public transport.”

    Read moreLive CCTV on buses to be tested

    New law to allow police to collect DNA in secret from teacups

    MI5 and the police may be allowed to secretly collect genetic samples from items such as cigarette butts and teacups under new laws that could massively expand the national DNA database.

    The powers would allow investigators to break in to suspects’ homes to collect DNA which could then be shared with foreign governments to check for links to crime and terrorism.

    The new law, being discussed by Parliament, would mean the ‘stolen’ samples – thousands of which have already been taken by the security services – would be admissible in court and at a stroke hugely expand the Government’s controversial DNA database.


    Concern: Minister Lord West wants data shared between governments

    But human rights activists fear the new powers could lead to more innocent people having their DNA stored and, due to cross-contamination, being wrongly accused of crimes or terrorism.

    The proposals, which are contained in the Counter-Terrorism Bill, were outlined last week by Security Minister Lord West in the wake of Labour’s unsuccessful attempt to introduce legislation to hold terror suspects for 42 days without charge.

    Read moreNew law to allow police to collect DNA in secret from teacups

    UK: Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones

    Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

    Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

    A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

    The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.

    The pay-as-you-go phones are popular with criminals and terrorists because their anonymity shields their activities from the authorities. But they are also used by thousands of law-abiding citizens who wish to communicate in private.

    The move aims to close a loophole in plans being drawn up by GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, to create a huge database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

    The “Big Brother” database would have limited value to police and MI5 if it did not store details of the ownership of more than half the mobile phones in the country.

    Read moreUK: Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones

    Big Brother database: the revolt grows

    Labour MPs join opposition parties in attack on Home Secretary’s ‘Orwellian’ plans

    Jacqui Smith faces a parliamentary backlash over “Orwellian” plans to intercept details of email, internet, telephone and other data records of every person in Britain. Labour MPs joined opposition parties in expressing doubts about plans announced by the Home Secretary which could lead to a vast database of information about Britons’ calls and internet habits.

    They warned that MPs, emboldened by the Government’s decision to ditch plans to hold terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without charge, would not accept this extension of state power.

    The scale of the Government’s ambitions to hold data on email, internet and phone use emerged as government sources made it clear they needed new powers to obtain details of social networking sites on the internet, video sites, web-based telephone calls and even online computer games.

    Read moreBig Brother database: the revolt grows

    Government will spy on every call and e-mail

    Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

    GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project.

    Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers – thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.

    Ministers are braced for a backlash similar to the one caused by their ID cards programme. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “Any suggestion of the government using existing powers to intercept communications data without public discussion is going to sound extremely sinister.”

    Read moreGovernment will spy on every call and e-mail

    Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind

    Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening – a body scanner that can read your mind.

    Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person – not the device – set to wreak havoc and terror.

    MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security’s directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.

    It has a series of sensors and imagers that read your body temperature, heart rate and respiration for unconscious tells invisible to the naked eye – signals terrorists and criminals may display in advance of an attack.

    But this is no polygraph test. Subjects do not get hooked up or strapped down for a careful reading; those sensors do all the work without any actual physical contact. It’s like an X-ray for bad intentions.

    Read moreHomeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind

    Home Office: Car journeys to be stored on a national database for five years


    CCTV cameras, converted to read ANPR data, capturing people’s movement. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Reuters

    The police are to expand a car surveillance operation that will allow them to record and store details of millions of daily journeys for up to five years, the Guardian has learned.


    Paul Lewis on police plans to store car surveillance records Link to this audio

    A national network of roadside cameras will be able to “read” 50m licence plates a day, enabling officers to reconstruct the journeys of motorists.

    Police have been encouraged to “fully and strategically exploit” the database, which is already recording the whereabouts of 10 million drivers a day, during investigations ranging from counter-terrorism to low-level crime.

    But it has raised concerns from civil rights campaigners, who question whether the details should be kept for so long, and want clearer guidance on who might have access to the material.

    Read moreHome Office: Car journeys to be stored on a national database for five years

    French revolt over Edvige: Nicolas Sarkozy’s Big Brother spy computer


    Edvige, which is also a woman’s name, has been dubbed Sarkozy’s “Big Sister” in France

    President Nicolas Sarkozy faced an embarrassing split in his Cabinet today over a computer system that a new French internal intelligence service will use to spy on the private lives of millions of law-abiding citizens.

    Hervé Morin, the Defence Minister, broke government ranks to side with a growing revolt against Edvige, an acronym for a police database that will store personal details including opinions, the social circle and even sexual preferences of more or less anyone who interests the State.

    Edvige, which is also a woman’s name, was created by decree in July to store data on anyone aged 13 or above who is “likely to breach public order”.

    “Sarkozy’s Big Sister”, as it has been dubbed, will also track anyone active in politics or trade unions and in a significant role in business, the media, entertainment or social or religious institutions. Listed people will have limited rights to consult their files.

    Read moreFrench revolt over Edvige: Nicolas Sarkozy’s Big Brother spy computer

    Is Google Turning Into Big Brother?

    The Debut of Chrome, Google’s New Browser, May Have Been Quiet for a Reason

    While we’re transfixed by the presidential election, in the world of high tech another duel between two well-funded, take-no-quarter candidates has just emerged & and in the long run the impact on our daily lives may be nearly as great — and perhaps even sinister.

    Read moreIs Google Turning Into Big Brother?

    Who Wants To Be CEO of a Red, White and Blue Kakistocracy*?

    *Kakistocracy is government by the very worst, least principled, and most incompetent people. You will be forgiven for thinking that the word, kakistocracy, perhaps derives from the word, “caca”, itself derived from the Latin, “cacare”. In fact, kakistocracy derives from the Greek, kakos, meaning “bad”.)

    Read moreWho Wants To Be CEO of a Red, White and Blue Kakistocracy*?

    ‘Environmental volunteers’ will be encouraged to spy on their neighbours

    Councils are recruiting residents to report anyone who drops litter, fails to recycle their rubbish properly, or who allows their dog to foul the streets.

    Advertisements looking for people to sign up for the unpaid “environmental volunteer” jobs have been posted across the country in recent months.

    Critics said the scheme is encouraging a Big Brother society where friends and neighbours will be encouraged to “snoop” on one another.

    The recruitment drive follows news that the Home Office is granting police powers to council staff and private security guards, allowing then to hand out fines for low-scale offences and ask for personal details.

    Read more‘Environmental volunteers’ will be encouraged to spy on their neighbours

    The Orwellian nightmare is here

    In the Queen’s speech this autumn Gordon Brown’s government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and “made accessible” to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and “other public bodies”.

    This fact should be in equal parts incredible and nauseating. It is certainly enraging and despicable. Not even George Orwell in his most febrile moments could have envisaged a world in which every citizen could be so thoroughly monitored every moment of the day, spied upon, eavesdropped, watched, tracked, followed by CCTV cameras, recorded and scrutinised. Our words and web searches, our messages and intimacies, are to be stored and made available to the police, the spooks, the local council – the local council! – and “other public bodies”.

    Read moreThe Orwellian nightmare is here