We’re all being watched, get over it!

On my daily perusal of the UK national newspaper websites this morning I came across the following item about a new Tory government initiative – see here – in THE INDEPENDENT

It seems to me that there are points to make on both sides of the issue, as follows:

Firstly, that the Government has just come up with a pretty stupid and ill (or completely un-) thought out wheeze, rather in the style of Tony Blair’s infamous plan that police might be given the authority, upon apprehending some petty criminal or another, to administer swift – sharp shock – justice by marching them to the nearest hole-in-the-wall cashpoint and fining them £50 upon the spot, a crackpot idea that was instantly dropped and (Blair hoped) forgotten as soon as the first political adviser or civil servant who looked into it appreciated how ridiculous and impractical it was.

But secondly, that those anti-establishment would-be revolutionaries now screaming about this cowardly and nefarious attack upon civil liberties and an Englishman’s inalienable right to protest and disrupt the rest of us whenever he feels like it have also completely missed the point.

From my standpoint as an old-age pensioner who can write all that he knows about the modern world of social media, smartphone capability and indeed surveillance techniques upon the reverse side of a first class postage stamp, it seems as plain as a pikestaff to me that ‘the authorities’ (whether governmental, security services or military) already – without having to do much more than press a few buttons – can access far more data upon any individual citizen of the United Kingdom than said citizen can possibly imagine.

In which case, to anyone outraged by this latest potential ‘infringement upon their rights’ by our lords and masters, I’d say “What on earth are you worried about? By your incessant facebooking, tweeting, online banking, instant-gramming [or whatever it’s called], online dating, sexting and file-sharing with strangers, you’ve already given every potential dickhead stalker, computer hacker, troll, backstabber, ‘revenge porn’ perpetrator and similar ne’er-do-well every opportunity he or she needs to infiltrate, identify and foul up your lives … so why balk at letting the government and its agencies do the same?”

Oh, I forgot … the world and its wife just loves another – indeed any – opportunity to campaign about something that ‘Big Brother’ is doing, so why should this one be any different?

Silly me.