Is there no end to the intrusions New Labour will inflict on our private lives? Here’s the latest:

The Home Office says it will push ahead with plans to ask communications firms to monitor all internet use.

This is code for telling the firms to, or else. Anyone in the industry will know that they are apoplectic over this, not only because of the cost but they feel they are being asked to carry out the Governement’s dirty work for them.

Ministers confirmed their intention despite concerns and opposition from some in the industry.

Well, there’s a fucking surprise, they go on a fishing expedition to get the answer they seek and when they don’t they ignore the responses. Now where have we seen that recently? Oh yes:

Professor Nutt, the head of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), has been sacked.

Home secretary Alan Johnson made the decision after Professor Nutt reiterated comments saying ecstasy was less dangerous than riding a horse, and cannabis should have remained Class C.

No dissent allowed should be New Labour’s motto. Anyway, back to the latest trampling of our freedoms:

Both the police and secret security services have legal powers in the UK to intercept communications in the interests of combating crime or threats to national security.

Yes they do. As part of their licence terms, for example, the Mobile Network Operators (MNO) have to build in  access to the uncrpyted part of their networks when a judge issues a warrant. This was generally kept quiet, for obvious reasons, but the safeguards were put in place for a reason.

Note, despite the fact that at the time we could record speech and the IRA was very active nobody thought it would be a good idea to record it all, just in case. No, despite all their flaws, Maggie’s Tories did have some sense of the historic precedent of putting  freedom above security. The Labour Party and BBC of old did as well, but then they all had principles and balls.

But the rules largely focus on communications over telephones and do not cover the whole range of internet communications now being used.

And this is bollocks. The security services can, and do, get permission to tap emails and other data. I’ve seen a warrant and I’ve seen the data they were collecting, which looks like it will be used in a court case.

Ministers say that they do not want to create a single government-owned database and only intend to ask CSPs to hold a record of a contact, rather than the actual contents of what was said.

And we know why that is, because they are fucking incompetent and it is expensive. If the true cost was know and paid through taxation there would be riots. And tere will be duplication as each party keeps copies of every transaction, which makes it more expensive to implement this way.

The proposals are technically challenging, as they would require a CSP to sort and organise all third-party traffic coming and going through their systems. The estimated £2bn bill for the project includes compensation for the companies involved.

Yes it is technically challenging and that £2bn only pays for the initial servers, it doesn’t cover the costs of maintaining and adding to the server farms and all the expensive bright people who will be tied up in implementing this idiotic proposal rather than doing something economically productive. Oh, and server farms are killing Gaia because of all the electricity they need to keep them cool.

“The proposal represents a step change in the relationship between the citizen and the state,” said Mr Graham.

That should be another step change.

Just remember, Hitler was elected.

*Yes I know ts a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.