Nothing really new here, but some interesting conversations going on in the U.K. concerning increasing intrusiveness of privacy rights for those residing in the U.K.
The Associated Press reports that a senior British lawmaker quit Parliament yesterday based on what he describes as the government’s steady erosion of the country’s civil liberties. Opposition Conservative Party member David Davis made the announcement after Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government won another vote to tighten terrorism laws, says the AP report. Davis said he will force and win a special election based on a campaign to stop the “slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms.” “We will have shortly the most intrusive identity card system in the world. A CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with thousands of innocent children and millions of innocent citizens on it,” Davis said.
Human rights groups claim Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair, have eroded a long list of freedoms, often in the name of national security — imposing limits on protests near Parliament and government sites, handing police powers to civilian support staff and imposing virtual house arrests on some terrorism suspects. Read more..