Image by Chris Weston, British comic strip artist. (Click to view full-sized on his site.)
What’s worse, the British government wants to make the monitoring data available to “security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and ‘other public bodies'”.
Imagine the possibilities for abuse by whoever wanting to destroy a political opponent. Checks and balances? There don’t seem to be any. Nor a way to guard against the obvious possibility for false positives. Just because I google “terrorist” doesn’t mean I am one.
How many steps separate an innocent British citizen from some misinterpretation or interference or error in the collected and ‘made accessible’ data of text messages and emails, and a forthcoming home-grown version of Guantanamo Bay for people whose pattern of phone calls does not fit the police definition of acceptable?