I haven’t had time since my vacation to pay much attention to the homegrown intellectual leaders of conservative blogdom, but decided to do a quick whip around for the stimulation I’ve been missing. And I discovered a most disturbing trend.
– you’ve nothing to fear?
Millions of Britons who use social networking sites such as Facebook could soon have their every move monitored by the Government and saved on a “Big Brother” database.
– and you, the unwashed masses and assorted rabble who put us in our position of power, have no right to know anything.
Governments would be fully justified if they were to eliminate all freedom of information provisions in one fell swoop, an Ontario government lawyer told the Supreme Court of Canada yesterday.
A database of “every phone call, email and time spent on the internet by the public” sounds like something that Stalin, Mao, or Hitler, would have loved to have, and that Jong Il, or George Bush would give just about anything for — but it looks like it will happen in Britain first.
…. that the Harper government would do something like this.
Just what is it with the Brits and their big brother practices anyway? In addition to their government trying to fingerprint everyone who lives in the country and sending people and families to respect camps if they, in the opinion of the state, exhibit anti-social behaviour, their airport authority now wants to fingerprint and photograph everybody going through the bloody airport.
Subtitled: DNA is your friend – especially if you’re an authoritarian government
God bless Her Majesties Benevolent Government tm ‘eh…. always looking to protect her loyal subjects, even if it’s at the expense of the privacy of future loyal subjects who may, or may not, ever commit a crime [let alone a violent one] in their entire lives but who will end up in the policeman’s database anyway.
An article in the on-line version of the National Post discusses an Angus Reid poll that says, among other things, that 63% of Canadians believe that “the need for safety trumps individual privacy rights“.
California Justice H. Walter Croskey recently said that “parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children” – now I’m not American but there’s one part of me that says he’s full of shite and parents should have the right to educate their own children if they so wish, then I think about the Jesus Camp freaks and other assorted wackos…….
Written on March 11, 2008 | Posted in
Privacy & Civil Rights,
Religion |
5 Comments
In a special report to Parliament, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says the Mounties broke the law and their own policy by unnecessarily squirrelling away files or keeping them longer than they should in what are known as “exempt” information banks. “What we found when we took a close look at the RCMP’s exempt data banks is disturbing and important to Canadians,” Stoddart told a news conference yesterday.
Written on February 14, 2008 | Posted in
Authoritarianism,
Canada,
Canadian Politics,
Privacy & Civil Rights |
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Once again, under the guise of “keeping us safe“, government steps in and infringes upon privacy.
Written on February 12, 2008 | Posted in
Canada,
Privacy & Civil Rights |
8 Comments
Police fired a 50,000-volt Taser into the head of a 45-year-old company director who later proved to be unarmed and innocent. Daniel Sylvester, the owner of an east London security firm employing 65 staff to guard council offices, pubs and nightclubs, was driving home on October 20 when he was stopped by armed police because of “firearms related intelligence”.
Canadian officials are taking the unprecedented step of asking a judge to install closed-circuit video cameras inside a terrorism suspect’s family home, arguing national security necessitates the scrutiny.
Anti-democratic, Orwellian and hypocritical are some of the descriptors that suit Prime Minister Harper’s latest move to try to control his message to the Canadian people. In a plan apparently called the “Shoe Store Project”, so named for the location of a former shoe shop that will soon be the new place where Harper plans [...]
Suck it up!! We’re gonna surveil your asses and you’re gonna like it.
Written on October 2, 2007 | Posted in
Privacy & Civil Rights,
US Politics |
9 Comments