Outrage on a sliding scale
Peter Wilby writes in the New Statesman:
My outrage on civil liberties issues is on a sliding scale. At the top are no-jury trials, detention without charge, restrictions on rights to protest and, worst of all, the possibility that the British security services, and even ministers, colluded with torture and extraordinary rendition. Somewhere in the middle come databases of emails and website visits. At the bottom – not outraging me at all, if I am honest – come DNA databases and identity cards. Some civil liberties – the right to carry guns, for example, which so moves many Americans, or to exceed speed limits without being spotted by a camera, which is most Tories’ favourite liberty – I would prefer to campaign against.
March 7th, 2009 at 16:01
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear right? Perhaps you could tell that to one of the innocent Guantanamo inmates.
I’d rather not take the chance and allow the government to get higher up the “scale”. Moreover surely the “lower” infringements on liberty permit and facilitate greater abuse.
March 9th, 2009 at 20:46
Identity cards can be and will be used to track people’s movements by use of the rfid chip inside them. In fact if you used to go into woolies as I did and just pass the till when someone has the till open there will be signals sent from your card to it even if it just says that you are not buying anything. A kind of good house keeping signal. Moreover there is the distinct posssiblity that lamp posts can be used and I believe the Home Office have decided to do this so they can “better police” certain areas at night. It will be sold to us as catch a burglar or something with a neat title. So they will watch for the rfid signals then ask for an identifying number and get it from the card. How this man gets printed in a national newspaper is laughable and embarrassing and dangerous.
Regarding guns — it is because the govt knows that we can’t do anything against them that they are going ahead with these wretched policies.