Communication Data Bill - British Government To Spy On Its Own People

Although it has a reputation for individual liberty it will come as a shock to many people around the world that the line between democracy and tyranny in Great Britain is now so thin it has reached breaking point.

Corruption and sleaze notwithstanding the relationship between the government and the people is broken almost beyond repair and it is in desperate need of resetting.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people is long gone, it has been abolished by politicians who pursue power not to serve the people but to impose their own ideologically driven agenda.

Tyrannical governments have always been obsessed by controlling the information that reaches the people and this paranoia has led them to take extraordinary measures to make sure that independent sources of information are suppressed.

The invention of the printing press facilitated the mass production of independent information, and this threatened the governments monopoly of opinion. To counter this it was forced to seek out and destroy the presses and to prosecute their owners.

Independent newspapers and magazines were a thorn in the side of state but they would self censor when ordered. The abdication crisis of King Edward and Mrs Simpson together with wartime censorship being a classic examples.

Under the pretext of press ethics the printed media is in the process of being censored as a result of the Leveson kangaroo court and this will be covered in a later post.

Advances in technology further threatened the government's domination of the communications industry and they responded with legislation.

The General Post Office (GPO)  was a government creation which gave the state a monopoly over mail delivery from sender to receiver and it was this mandated monopoly that was used by the state to justify its control over all forms of communication as technology advanced.

The invention of the telegraph and the setting up of communications businesses by the private sector was perceived as a threat. The state claimed that a telegraph message came under the sender to receiver monopoly therefore they passed the Telegraph Act in 1868 which nationalised the telegraph companies giving the state a monopoly over telecommunications.

Similarly with the invention of the telephone, the state controlled GPO obtained a court judgement that telephone conversations fell under the remit of the Telegraph Act. The telephone companies like the telegraph companies were subsequently nationalised.

With the advent of radio communications, the state responded with the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1904 which gave the state control over radio waves.

Of all the legislation passed so far this Act of 1904 was the most draconian and the one that is rightly associated with totalitarian regimes the world over as it gave the state control over all future communication systems without the need for further legislation.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was set up in 1922 as a government controlled monopoly with all competition banned until 1955, even then the limited independent channels could not compete fairly as the proceeds from the extorted television tax went exclusively to the BBC.

It is universally accepted that the BBC is hideously biased to the left and in breach of its Charter and regardless of its claim to be independent of government it is still in thrall to the Orwellian Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport. The revolving door between the BBC and the Labour Party is legendary.

The BBC monopoly of radio was still in force as late as 1975 when the government did licenced some independent operators but in order to squeeze them out it reorganised BBC Radio accordingly to maintain its dominant position.

The invention of the World Wide Web is the biggest challenge yet for the authoritarian instincts of the government. The use of the Internet and social media has set the people free from government regulated opinion and the politicians don't like it.

To counter the perceived threat posed by the Internet, Email, Facebook, Twitter etc the government has come up with the Communication Data Bill with which they plan to snoop on its own citizens.

Politicians claim they need to know when parents communicate with their children, their family and their friends or what research they have done on the Internet and when they post on Facebook or Twitter.

In addition to details of their private communications, the politicians are telling their citizens that they also need to know the details of their salary, bank accounts, race, religion, gender, sexual preferences etc. all for their own safety and protection.

These are the same politicians who paid out hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money to lawyers in an attempt to keep details of their expenses thievery secret from the public.

It appears that the citizens of Great Britain are not entitled to the same human right to privacy as the sleazy charlatans that are supposed to act in their best interests.

If there is any doubt that politicians of all parties have declared war on their own citizens then it should be noted that this authoritarian piece of legislation was dreamt up by the Labour Party who were only doing what socialists the world over do and that is to make free people subservient to the state.

Instead of throwing it in the bin, the legislation has been revived and submitted to parliament by the Conservative Party which used to hold individual liberty and small government as its core principle.

It would appear that authoritarianism in Great Britain has crossed party lines and is no longer the preserve of the socialists.