overheard

Wiretapping, it was New Labour's first major reversal of the burden of proof, all the way back in 2000 with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. But as Robert X. Cringely points out wiretapping has a very long history. Big government always wants an eye on it's citizens. It is just that the tyrant Blair loves to play the voyeur on other people conversations more than others before him, but unlike Bush across the pond can do so legally with great ease. Basically whomever he finds interesting, and all their friends, are likely to get tapped. This is after all the government that has constructed a database of the DNA of 24,000 juveniles who have never been cautioned, charged or convicted of an offence. If they are not tapped already. He even wants to remove the privilege that MP's where supposed to have of not getting their phones tapped, a privilege honoured more in the breach than the execution according to Stephen Pollard.

But surely if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear? The cry will go, an argument neatly skewered by Dr richard North at EU Referendum. And that is in what is despite New Labour's best efforts still a fairly liberal country. It holds even less weight when applied to a totalitarian dictatorship like China where you can be arrested and imprisoned for sending an email and Yahoo, the email provider, will be only to happy to shop you to the police. Google is under pressure to do the same, to release it's search records to the police to go fishing in from anything interesting. At the moment they are standing by their commitment to not be Evil. But that is unlikely to last forever.