Prime Minister David Cameron has said “gaps” in national security must be plugged but there was “still time” to meet civil liberties concerns.
Sigh.
Time was when governments wanted to take away our freedoms we would at least get some rhetoric about how dangerous our enemy was, you know, imminent nuclear annihilation by an ideological enemy.
We had to fight the creators of brutal gulags, fight to free people were held in violation of habeas corpus. We had to liberate people from repressive police states where the criminal justice bureaucracy lobbied for more people to be locked up just to keep the money rolling in. The enemy was the snooping Stasi who pretended to need ever more powers. That’s not to mention the prevalence of secret trials and overseas, secret, detention and torture.
Of course, facing all those things we the citizens of the free world needed to take action… so now what do we do?
Filed under: Science, Society, Can I call them illiberal autocrats yet?, Guantanamo, Gulag, Liberal Democracts, New Police Powers, Rendition, Tories, USSR
You know, I kinda miss the Cold War sometimes…