Big brother and all that stuff

It's all over the news. The government want to build a database of all phone calls, email messages and text messages. They want to be able to spy on all of our communications. That's not the interesting bit though.

What interests me more is the argument put forward by MPs and pundits who are anti the proposal. The one argument they use is that because of the recent security breaches, the government is not fit to hold this information.

Well WOH! Wait a minute. Their argument isn't that spying on us would be inherently wrong, it's just that HM-Gov are too incompetent to do it. This frames the debate nicely. Get enough people to use this argument, and that gives the government a way in. All they have to do is prove that security has been tightened (and they are working on that like crazy) and then they can have their database.

I say be careful of using security competence as an argument. This should be opposed because nobody wants it, apart from the inevitable stupid "if you've done nothing wrong..." brigade.