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Friday, November 23, 2007

Big Sister

I'm not sure whether it's age or gender-related, and I know I shouldn't, but I still find it odd to have a Home Secretary called Jacqui. I also find it odd that we have a Department for Culture, Media and Sport: that still sounds, to me, like a Bulgarian ministry to be infiltrated in a cold war spy novel, but whatever. Anyway, I don't want to make a party political point (since politics isn't, generally speaking, the point of this blog) but Jacqui -- or Big Sister, as she will undoubtedly be known to posterity -- recently signed into law a new statutory instrument under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Under this instrument, 796 organisations now have the right to look at our telephone records. These include the police, the Department of Health (it's only a matter of time before your calls to Domino's pizza will, along with your smoking habits, become a factor in your waiting list ranking for NHS), the Immigration Service, the Food Standards Agency and 796 organisations now have the right to look at our telephone records. Not just Woking council, of course, but local authorities in general. Honestly. It gets more like North Korea round here every day, except luckily the government don't run Waitrose so the food shortages haven't cut in yet.

I'd lay a pound to a penny that the first time Woking council invoke their new Stalinist powers it will not be to defeat a cunning plot by international terrorists dedicated to our destruction but in a dispute over hedges or car parking.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

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