Legal Commentary

Britain becoming Orwellian surveillance society

By David Canton

Cory Doctorow has a post on Boing Boing entitled Britain will make foreigners carry RFID identity cards and will put us in a huge, Orwellian database: the rest of Britain will be next.  Its worth a read.

He says in part:

My family fled the Soviet Union after the war. They were displaced people (my father was born in a refugee camp in Azerbaijan) who destroyed their papers to protect themselves from the draconian authorities who sought to limit their travel and migration. I used to think it was ironic that my family had gone from Europe to Canada and back to Europe again in a generation, but now I don’t know how long the Doctorows will be staying in Europe — or at least in the UK. The green and pleasant land has suspended habeas corpus, instituted street searches without particularlized suspicion, encourages its citizens to spy and snitch on each other, and now has issued mandatory universal papers that will track we dirty immigrants as we move around our adopted “home,” as part of a xenophobic campaign to arouse fear and resentment against migrants.  …  In living memory, my family has been chased from its home by governments whose policies and justification the Labour Party has aped.

And some people wonder what privacy advocates bristle against things like the increasing use of surveillance cameras. 

Full post as published by eLegal Canton on September 26, 2008 (boomark / email).