UNIVERSAL DATA MANAGEMENT

This morning I was rifling through our collection of images, all taken by John, because I was looking for an image for another post I want to write. And I came across the image above. The figure has ‘UNIVERSAL DATA MANAGEMENT’ written across his chest. Far fetched?

This blog post from the FT points out that the UK government has “been keen to broaden the scope” of an EU directive, which already sanctions email monitoring and requires ISPs to keep traffic data for 12 months, to monitor social networking sites for ‘terrorist activity’. This makes me nervous.

Down With This Sort Of Thing!

There is understandable public anxiety about police tactics at the G20 Summit demonstrations. At the same time as ‘reviewing’ police tactics, might part of the official response be an attempt to further erode our right to peaceful protest?

As the man’s poster says, careful now. A lot of people, myself included, have had enough. Enough monitoring. Enough snooping. Just … enough.

What do we want? To be able to say ‘Down with this sort of thing’.

When do we want it? Now and always.