1984 for real in November 2016

On Wednesday November 16th 2016 this country sleepwalked into the reality of 1984.

The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 will allow the state to do the following:

*Communications companies must now keep a record of all of your tele communications for 12 months, basically always, every phone call, every text, every email, every web site visited, every linked clicked will be recorded and stored.
* The Police no longer need a warrant to access this information and even local councils will be able to use a special search engine.
* The state will allow for your computer, phone, tablet etc to be hacked in real-time, this is called equipment interference.
* Along with the Five Eyes agreement the USA, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand now have access to all of your information should GCHQ decide to share it, not a lot of guessing if they will or not.

The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 allows for mass surveillance of the population, this type of surveillance has often been cited as necessary to fight terrorism, to prevent social unrest, to protect national security. However, mass surveillance has also often been criticized for violating privacy rights, limiting civil and political rights and freedoms. By increasing mass surveillance we are allowing ‘The Party’ as written in 1984 to view all of us a threat when the reality is that the more our rights are eroded, the more our civil liberties are weakened the state becomes the threat and we are the pawns.

Both Labour and the SNP abstained on the second reading of the bill and it would appear broadly support it in the main. Labour support many elements of the bill and while the SNP say they don’t agree with many parts of the Act they still abstained rather than vote against, total joke. Some people say that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, BULLSHIT. This Act will be given Royal Assent and become law with nothing more than a whimper from the media, from the opposition parties, from us. We will have allowed our civil liberties to be undermined and you get bet your ass they won’t ever be coming back.

Edward Snowden said “I don’t want to live in a world where everything I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity and love or friendship is recorded.”

Many of us believe in the fight for Scottish Independence, for a democratically elected, republican Scotland. There is a good chance that we will have another referendum before long, the last time we were up against Westminster, her allies, the media and the so called opposition parties, this Act in my opinion makes that fight harder now as nothing will be secret, no strategy, no communications. What were the SNP thinking in abstaining on this dreadful attack on one of the few things we have in this country, a right to privacy, a right to innocent before guilty, I am starting to wonder what is the point of even independence when the state can pretty do what the f*** it wants anyway.

Advertisement