Eclectic Memes

This is the single most feeble minded position offered in defense of intrusions in people’s private lives.

Consider the UK governments obsession with spying on, indexing and cataloging their citizens. Often proponents of things like the DNA database, identity cards and consolidated cross department data sharing trot out the ‘if you’re innocent you have nothing to worry about’ trope.

Really? You’re that naive?

The problem is not that the government are competent enough to use this information to spy on their citizens (let’s face it they can barely manage to keep track of their citizens for most legitimate reasons – like not sending tax bills to dead people). The problem is that they are incompetent to be trusted with such a vast amount of information. There is simply no way to ensure that this information is secure (lost disks, USB sticks and laptops containing sensitive information are forever being reported in the news).

My concern is not over ‘Big Brother’ but over ‘Nosey Parker’ and ‘Fraudulent Fred’ who, if pst records are anything to go by, will have even more access to more data if the government is permitted to keep increasingly invasive information about their citizens.