War-on-Freedom.com

Tony Blair is preparing to scrap a 40-year ban on tapping MPs' telephones, despite fierce Cabinet opposition, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. He is expected to formally announce to the Commons within weeks that MPs can no longer be sure that the security services and others will not intercept their communications. - Independent

We continue to struggle to give Blair the benefit of the doubt. As SpyBlog writes:

Is this an outrage against democracy and further evidence of the slide towards an authoritarian NuLabour police state ?
Or is it an attempt to regulate or stop an existing illegal political bugging operation ?

Blair has a lot to gain by tapping David Cameron's and Gordon Brown's phones. But presumably this announcement would just mean that Cameron and Brown can simply switch to a more secure form of communication.

Is it then an indication of Blair's complete disregard for anyone's privacy? Will this changeLabour MPs pro-ID excuse of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"?

Posted by Dave at 01:01 AM | Permalink

Ahh, hark back to 1996 when Blair promised us an open government. Sadly, as soon as he got into power, he sacked the writer of the FOI white paper and watered it down. As this Government became the most secretive in history, the FOI only eventually came into power at the start of 2005.

Anyone who has tried to find out their dirty dealings over the Stasi ID database knows they illegally refuse/delay responding to FOI requests anyway. They even set up a department to frustrate FOI requests.
Anyone who has the patience to follow through can appeal to the Information Commissioner. Consequently, 1200 cases were pending in September.

But now, using the excuse of 'parents requesting too much information on schools', Ministers are now apparently considering charging us to further limit us from finding out what they're doing.

Posted by Dave at 12:49 AM | Permalink