Sunday, November 25, 2007
We All Have Something To Hide
The mantra of this Labour government under Gordon Brown, and Tony Blair before him, that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear sounds, on the face of it, a reasonable argument to a public who don't think past the words and fail to realise just how stupid and innacurate that slogan is, for that is all it is - a meaningless slogan.
We all have something to hide, and not only our bank account passwords and PIN numbers.
How many people would be so happy to repeat out loud that they have nothing to hide and nothing to fear if they knew their National Health Service records were to be accessible by over 300,000 people at the click of a mouse. How many would say they have nothing to fear if that information was to be accessed by, say, the company who they would like to get life insurance cover from, or insure their car with and, if they stopped and thought for a moment, could they be confident that, out of that 300,000 people who might take a quiet peek at the health problems of the nation, not one would be so dishonest as to sell information to interested parties?
Our drinking habits, sexual history [and diseases] and drug problems, our family troubles and the ailments and diseases that run in our families, our mental conditions. My goodness, how 300,000 nosey parkers would laugh at some of the things recorded on that database, and how even a small handfull of dishonest ones would laugh at the sheer size of the gift in their hands.
Of course the medical records of the nation are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what this government want to know about us. They want to know where we are going, where we have been, who we have talked to on our phones and in our Email. They want to know what our children are eating, what they say about their parents, and they want their fingerprints and a sample of their DNA. Just in case, you understand.
The government want to have us all present and correct on their database, and carrying our chipped identity cards, so that the police can ask us to produce that card any time, for any reason or no reason, all the better for adding every byte of data about us, to add to the story of our lives from birth to death and beyond, to sit on the database alongside our sample of DNA, set of fingerprints and the scans of our irises.
The ID cards we will be forced to carry will not be owned by us, but by the state, and the Home Secretary will be able to revoke an individual's card any time, rendering him or her a non-person, cut off from work, state benefit, health care, all the things we take for granted in a free society.
In other words, the government will have complete knowledge over everyone's life, and complete control over everyone's life.
Even for anyone who still insists they have nothing to hide, one thing is certain, whether they know it or not, they certainly have everything to fear.
HOME
We all have something to hide, and not only our bank account passwords and PIN numbers.
How many people would be so happy to repeat out loud that they have nothing to hide and nothing to fear if they knew their National Health Service records were to be accessible by over 300,000 people at the click of a mouse. How many would say they have nothing to fear if that information was to be accessed by, say, the company who they would like to get life insurance cover from, or insure their car with and, if they stopped and thought for a moment, could they be confident that, out of that 300,000 people who might take a quiet peek at the health problems of the nation, not one would be so dishonest as to sell information to interested parties?
Our drinking habits, sexual history [and diseases] and drug problems, our family troubles and the ailments and diseases that run in our families, our mental conditions. My goodness, how 300,000 nosey parkers would laugh at some of the things recorded on that database, and how even a small handfull of dishonest ones would laugh at the sheer size of the gift in their hands.
Of course the medical records of the nation are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what this government want to know about us. They want to know where we are going, where we have been, who we have talked to on our phones and in our Email. They want to know what our children are eating, what they say about their parents, and they want their fingerprints and a sample of their DNA. Just in case, you understand.
The government want to have us all present and correct on their database, and carrying our chipped identity cards, so that the police can ask us to produce that card any time, for any reason or no reason, all the better for adding every byte of data about us, to add to the story of our lives from birth to death and beyond, to sit on the database alongside our sample of DNA, set of fingerprints and the scans of our irises.
The ID cards we will be forced to carry will not be owned by us, but by the state, and the Home Secretary will be able to revoke an individual's card any time, rendering him or her a non-person, cut off from work, state benefit, health care, all the things we take for granted in a free society.
In other words, the government will have complete knowledge over everyone's life, and complete control over everyone's life.
Even for anyone who still insists they have nothing to hide, one thing is certain, whether they know it or not, they certainly have everything to fear.
HOME
Labels: Brown, Civil Liberties, Freedom, Labour, State
© Colcam 2005-2007
