Occasional Tales

Thinking of how we can control them. Now for our third story about the noble, data-obsessed nation of Democratia and back to an issue I’ve mentioned before. The government manages to reduce the crime rate, but then decides that prevention is better than cure by banging up recidivists before they can get up to any mischief. And then recidivists came to include anyone who might complain a little and school children, who were an easy target. The choice was between the good of the many and the inconveniencing of a few. But did the government really have to think of the children? We seem to be back in the world of utilitarianism again. Indeed, this would just about be HMG’s ideal world in which the sheep-like populace thinking that it enjoys greater freedom than all those wretched foreign Johnnies fails to observe that its lot isn’t as good as it thought. In fact, all too many of the sheep-like populace would probably applaud. The scenario is not unlike Brave New World with its manufacture...

And the government isn’t snooping at all. The government of Democratia passes the Data Protection Act which allows people to see what info the government has on them provided it’s not an official secret and the police don’t mind. And like any good government, it decides to collate lots and lots of information about the people in a database; and not just some girlie database – a super database. And it’s all so the government can help people. Really. (Yeah, I feel the belief coursing through my veins.) But then people start demanding access to all sorts of information, including information about politicians in local government and ministerial holidays. But should people be checking up on all this? Should the inspector be inspected? Well, yes. HMG likes to bleat about accountability, but they think that only applies to them when there’s an election. In this sort of scenario, all the activities of and information about the government would probably be labelled state secrets, sorry, a mat...

Somebody’s watching me! Ah, the noble nation of Democratia. All cameras and hi-tech surveillance, but for the public good, of course, because everyone needs to be watched in case one of the country’s twenty-five criminals commits a crime. The question is whether the government has ridden rough shod over the right to privacy or whether all this intrusion is necessary. Like China, the UK is an endemic surveillance state. Like China, one government isn’t really that different from its predecessors in its paranoia about what its citizens are doing. It’s no good saying that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about. The implicit assumption is that the government doesn’t trust you regardless of what you’re doing. The implication is that you have no right to privacy where the government is concerned. I tend to think that such situations don’t instil feelings of safety in society and confidence in the government, but rather they produce suspicion and paranoia. Just l...