The Big Brother database and the DPP

Hard on the heels of stories about the Giant databases and the censorship of the internet we now have the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, publicly telling the current Labour Government not to

"break the back of freedom"

by creating irreversible powers that could be misused to spy on individual citizens and so threaten Britain's hard-won democracy. Sir Ken, who steps down next month as DPP, continued

"We need to take very great care not to fall into a way of life in which freedom's back is broken by the relentless pressure of a security state.

"Technology gives the state enormous powers of access to knowledge and information about each of us, and the ability to collect and store it at will. Of course, modern technology is of critical importance to the struggle against serious crime. Used wisely, it can protect us."

But he added that "we need to understand that it is in the nature of state power that decisions taken in the next few months and years about how the state may use these powers, and to what extent, are likely to be irreversible. They will be with us forever. And they, in turn, will be built upon. So we should take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can't bear".

The most important point of this speech is the fact that these type of plans are irreversible. Once they are in place they just never go away and are almost always built upon to take away more freedoms and allow us less privacy in our normal lives.

This is from the Government who has publicly said that not supporting 42 days allows terrorists to kill members of the public. The implied threat is that they know best and can do no wrong.

This is the true "crimespeak" of 1984 arriving in 2008.

Big Brother database threatens to 'break the back of freedom' - UK Politics, UK - The Independent