Things are just getting more troubling when it comes to free speech, privacy and confidentiality all over the world. It’s very depressing to see them threatened in such bastions of freedom as Britain and the USA.
Consider this article from The Telegraph’s website:
Phone and email records to be stored in new spy plan
Details of every phone call and text message, email traffic and websites visited online are to be stored in a series of vast databases under new Government anti-terror plans.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/9090617/Phone-and-email-records-to-be-stored-in-new-spy-plan.html
And from a related article:
Plans for the controversial move to make internet and phone companies keep a record of every email, phone call, text message and message on social networks such as Facebook, were first disclosed by The Sunday Telegraph in February.
They are at the centre of mounting concern from civil liberties groups and backbench members of both Coalition parties, with senior Conservative backbenchers now increasingly outspoken in opposition to the measures.
The new measures would force internet firms to install hardware enabling GCHQ to examine “on demand” and in “real time” details of any phone call, text message or email, and any website visited.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9192209/GCHQ-warns-it-is-losing-terrorists-on-the-internet.html
So this is where we’ve come: on-demand, real-time monitoring of the vast numbers of innocents, in what is probably a futile attack on terrorists who will simply change their methods right around our security. I cannot imagine a more catastrophic opportunity for information to be stolen, misused or altered. But of course THAT never happens.