House of Lords Report on British Surveillance State
February 7th, 2009Via: Guardian:
The House of Lords report on Britain’s surveillance society is a devastating analysis of the systems that have been installed by the authoritarian Labour government and the controlling forces emerging in local government. There is no question now that Britain’s free society is under threat, and it is time for the public and opposition parties to declare an end to this regime of intrusion.
Until today it has been the work of activists, journalists and a handful of academics like Clive Norris of Sheffield University to warn of the dangers to our freedom and privacy posed by the database state. Now it is official. There could be no more authoritative judgment than this measured report, Surveillance Citizens and the State, produced by the Lord’s constitution committee. The report says that mass surveillance “risks undermining the fundamental relationship between the state and citizens, which is the cornerstone of democracy and good governance”.
It paints a picture of a governing class that has become obsessed with the collection of personal data. The public is “often unaware of the vast amount of information about them that is kept and exchanged between organisations” This will be greatly increased if Jack Straw’s coroners’ and justice bill is allowed to pass through the Commons, with Labour manipulating the parliamentary schedule so that the data-sharing proposals contained in it go largely unscrutinised.
The report says that successive governments have constructed an advanced surveillance society on the pretext of dealing with the menace of crime and terror. It amounts “to one of the most significant changes in the life of the nation since the end of the second world war”. I would add that it is the greatest threat to our democracy since Britain faced Hitler’s military machine.
