It’s been a busy news day today and the headlines won’t make happy reading for our Orwellian government.

First there was the release of the Home Affairs Committee Report “A Surveillance Society?”. I haven’t been able to read the full report yet, however it’s been widely summarised as a diplomatically worded attack on the government. The report stresses the danger of the way successive governments collect ever more information about us, keep it ever longer and share it ever more widely. Schemes mentioned by in this context include compulsory national ID Cards and the DNA database.

Committee Chairman Keith Vaz has summarised the report as calling for a principle of “least data for least time”. This it clearly contradicted by the government’s plans for a vast, intrusive National Identity Register (NIR), email snooping and free-for-all data sharing.

Responding on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was unrepentant. She said:

“I know that when as it was then, the Labour-controlled council in my constituency, funded CCTV cameras in the town centre to help to protect people when they wanted to go out and have a night out without being blighted by anti-social behaviour, people supported it.

So I know for example with the DNA database that tens of thousands of crimes have been solved because of the use of the DNA database.”

The other big news so far today also comes from the Andrew Marr show and concerns Brown’s plans for 42 day internment without charge. The vote on Wednesday is likely to be very close and the government has become increasingly desperate in it’s attempts to push the change through. However on the Andrew Marr show Jacqui Smith admitted that MI5 had not requested an extension of internment to 42 days. If the organisation with primary responsibility for combatting terrorism hasn’t asked for 42 days then any attempts to justify it ring very hollow. This admission by Smith should help to bolster the Labour rebels for Wednesday.

Smith was again unrepentant. She tried to justify this admission by saying that MI5 hadn’t asked for the previous extension of internment to 28 days either. As if that somehow made things better.

I’d like to think that today’s headlines would cause Gordon Brown to stop and reconsider his continued support for Blair’s dangerous and illiberal policies. Unfortunately the government seems determined to press on regardless. There’s even been some speculation that Smith might be a possible future leader of the Labour Party!

Writing in the the Guardian on Friday Cath Elliot said:

“It seems incredible now, but on the May 3 1997 I actually celebrated Labour’s election victory”

and

“In cahoots with an equally distasteful American regime, the New Labour government has masterminded and overseen an erosion to individual freedoms and liberties that both Thatcher and Reagan, even in the darkest days of their rule, could only have dreamed of.”

I know how you feel, Cath.

For the sake of our freedom we must get rid of Brown, Smith and the whole New Labour project.

Photo copyright © Dr. Heinz Linke / iStockphoto

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