Security

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7877182.stm

normally I am the first person to shout and complain when a new government database is announced.  Not so sure this time though.

Probably because I had assumed it already existed.

I have no problem with this one, as long as what it stores is limited, your name, when you left and where you are going.  Then the same coming back in.  I would also expect it to be run by the police or immigration control or what ever organisation runs this sort of thing, not the 'Government'.

On the other hand I do worry about being watched and tracked, and I do not like it.  I want to be free, and I sometimes feel that I am not.

I cannot one day simply disappear and live in a log cabin somewhere in the woods, just because I felt like it, someone will own the woods, or there will be council tax to pay on the log cabin, I will have to register my new address with no end of agencies.

Don't even get me started on protesting outside Parliament and terrorism laws and ID cards.  I will never carry an ID card, I will go to prison before I do.  And if I get locked up for 42 days under terror legislation for no good reason, I will become the terrorist and take down the houses of Parliament.

Seriously, why do we need all these laws?  Not only does it go against the freedom that we supposedly stand for, but it really does not help.  Nor is it really necessary, do we really need to fear the sort of terrorists than cannot park a car without being towed and fail at driving to an airport?

I mean no offence to the security services, I am confident they are doing a great job at keeping us safe, we never hear of their successes only their failures.  I also understand that sometimes people just need to be taken out, which incidentally is what I would have done instead of setting up the whole Guantanamo bay thing, if people are too dangerous to be allowed outside just quietly take them around back and be done with them.

However then the question is who makes that decision, what about the mistakes that will inevitably be made?  Questions too difficult for me to answer on a Sunday morning, maybe later in the week.