New domestic surveillance plans in Britain

How much manpower would it take to monitor your every phone call, text, email, and website visit? Seriously. As I recall from around the time of 9/11, it was said that the government had X-thousand pieces of intelligence that they had never had time to look at, let alone deal with. I'm not a terrorist, I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm not even particularly interesting - I'm not concerned.

Pat, this is where I disagree - I don't think that human interaction, whether by phone or email or website visit, is a mere privilege to be granted or not or monitored or not at the whim of the government. I believe that free human interaction is one of the core human rights necessary for human flourishing. I do appreciate that others feel differently, but that is my own feeling on the matter.

Incidentally, financial records and dealings are already completely monitored, at least in the US. Back in 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled that the government has a right of access to individuals' banking records without a warrant or probable cause to suspect that there is illegal activity, on the theory that people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in banking information. If your bank is connected with US banks and shares records, even those outside the US are subject to this.

The UK, the US, and every industrialized nation in the world has been doing this kind of surveillance for decades. As soon as I hit the "post" button, the NSA will have recorded this post, and my IP address in it's database....nothing new.

Here comes another ip for them to check :-)

I knew that Google was saving every web page in a vast database (which I have a problem with) but I didn't know about the government doing this or recording every phone call we make.

Its not scary to me,, I have no issues with it,, as long as my finaicial details are private,, anything else is fair game. People don't have to go on the internet,, its like driving, its a privilidge , not a right, what ever you put on a computer should be considered to be NOT private, since there are hackers who can assess anything anyways.

Sarah,

I have a feeling this has been going on for some time in the UK and also the US (and probably other places as well). Have a look at * en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon(signalsintelligence) * for one example.

Thanks for the link, Ken - it's really interesting. The debate about rights and privacy vs. "protection" from terrorism was reawakened for Americans after 9/11 and is still heated; I myself am not in favor of this level of domestic spying, down to being put on a list for checking out certain books at the library (is this still going on?).

And aside from that, we have private companies collecting information from us, putting cookies on our computers, and tailoring ads to specific users. It's all down a slippery slope and I don't like it.