I am perplexed - so what's new? - by the furore over security agencies collecting what amounts to several landfill sites of electronic data as a means of searching for some indications that X, Y or Z might, or might not, be contacting terrorist organisations. My instant re-action was that I would have been exceedingly cross if they were not doing that sort of thing. That, after all, is what we pay them for and as I have an aversion - a very strong aversion - to body parts being blown across tube trains and London buses then I don't mind if some mole at Cheltenham finds out about my frequent web-visits to the site of Miss Whackem's Institute for the Discipline of Naughty Young Gels because, of course, as you know, dear Reader, it is entirely innocent and is simply a means by which I can research the appalling lack of discipline in our 'skools' today - see previous post!
Also, I am equally perplexed at the notion that when you do anything on 'the net' it is somehow 'private' and 'privileged'. Of course it's not, it never has been and never will be. It is no different in essence from living in a 19th century village or small town in which the local squire is spotted paying the occasional visit to 'Widow Twanky', no doubt, he would say, for the puroposes of comforting her in her loss! All actions are public not private, the only difference is that some are spotted and some are not. So it is best to work on the assumption that sooner or later whatever you do will be noted by someone somewhere.
What is more important than the collection of information which will happen no matter what, is what the authorities do with it! If they, by which I mean the professionals in the security services, simply concentrate on the 'baddies' then I wish them well. Instantly, of course, that begs a definition of 'baddies' which you, me and the man in the street would have no difficulty in defining, but those twisted, psychopathic, mental retards who have allowed politics to rule their lives and who, by means of slithering and greasing their way up the political pole have reached positions of real power, only ever think that their political enemies are the real enemies of the state. We have just discovered a prime example of this with the current imbroglio in the USA where the enormously powerful Internal Revenue Service has been infiltrated by Left-wing activists raised in their youth in the hothouse of campus politics and who see it as their duty, no less, to use bureaucratic malignancy to attack their political opponents.
I leave you with one thought, in the event of the next Labour government would you want some paid Westminster minion of Len McCLuskey to have access to your collected data? Take that as a 'no', shall I?
