Orwell turns in his grave...

[mahnmut]

...And is probably joined by Huxley in the rotating exercise. Brave New World - does it already exist in our real world? How about Britain?

The London metropolitan police will soon have new extended rights, allowing them to download all data from the mobile phones of suspects and store it for unlimited amount of time. Regardless if any charges have

Comments

[hardblue]

Orwell was only too pessimistic. He should have titled his work 2024. But he can be forgiven since he was writing with the mess of World War II around him.

[htpcl]

Quite a visionary, he was.

[acethepug]

Except that I think Orwell was using it as a cautionary tale, not a how-to manual, as some governments are taking it now :)

Man, that's some scary stuff. I wonder how long it will take for that idea to gain traction and skip across the Pond to the US and/or Canada?

You know, my little smile there really seems out of place -- this issue should scare a lot more people a lot more than it does.

Thanks for posting.

[htpcl]

Um, I didn't post it. :-)

[sophia_sadek]

I recently encountered a comment by an American bemoaning the terrible toll on civil liberties imposed on the US by terrorism. Obviously, the guy did not realize that it was not terrorism that caused this, but anti-terrorism.

The English measures remind me of one of my favorite movies from the '80s. "Mistake! We don't make mistakes:"

[sealwhiskers]

Yeah, the Britain of today is pretty fucked up compared to just a handful of years ago. While I'm sure bomb threats on the tube and the like play a part in that, I have to wonder if there aren't some other dynamics at work. I also keep wondering if the Thatcher cabinet wouldn't have whole heartedly approved of these types of measures, since they discussed certain aspects of them favorably back in the day. (guns and closed records)
To be honest, the most bad-tasting aspect is the notion that you can close investigation records indefinitely to outside agencies and the public. The only parallel I can come to think of in a democracy would be certain laws during the Bush Jr era in the US. (which then the current president amended, something few know to give him credit for)

[htpcl]

By the way, here's how the police should be equipped to cause respect!

[underlankers]

Unfortunately there is an argument here that the more technology progresses, the more the threats to liberty and to democracy alter together with the technology. And when that technology makes the glorified crime/irregular warfare with a bad PR agent known as terrorism more effective and more deadly, it also increases hysteria in terms of reacting to it.