Big Brother is here and watching us all in Stockport!

The last ten years has seen the greatest intrusion in our private lives that anyone could have envisaged. The National ID Card is already starting to be introduced with a pilot project in Manchester. Police will be able to stop any individual and require them to produce their ID Card.

A new sinister advance in surveillance is being prepared with our every visit overseas being recorded. The facility to store records on our movements will be based at a secret location in Wythenshawe.

An evermore worrying development is being introduced by the Home Office.  The interception and recording of every phone call made and email sent available also to Local Authorities.

Already the police are acquiring a mass of information about individual’s DNA.  Every person suspected (but not convicted) of an offence has their DNA taken and recorded on a national computer. This is already the biggest national database in the world and once entered, cannot be removed even if found not guilty.

At birth every child’s details are now placed on a national computer (ContactPoint).  This records their progress in both health and educational attainment as well as criminal matters.  Every borough now has two designated officers who can obtain access to this information.

The national health computer system contains records for health professionals to access personal health information.  Access is open to GPs etc – when it works! 

The Terrorism Act 2000 was used by the government to freeze assets of Icelandic Banks and the police are using it to stop and question anyone in a designated area without need for reasonable suspicion and it has been used to harass bird watchers and train spotters.  Not a purpose for which it was intended.

The Coroners Justice Bill has been amended by the government (clause 152) to give ministers power to hand over a person’s private information from agency to agency irrespective of the original purpose under an “information sharing order” which is currently against common law.

Our Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Cheadle, Ben Jeffreys, is shocked by these revelations and said:  “This intrusion by government is a disgrace”. 

Taken individually these changes might seem quite innocent, but when considered as a whole they demonstrate how fast we are becoming a Police State where the government can do whatever it wishes. To the few even that prospect might be acceptable but for the states ability to misplace such confidential information on a pretty regular basis.

Councillor Bryan Leck
Conservative – Bramhall South

This article, by Cllr Bryan Leck, was first published by the Stockport Express 23/02/2009.