International Law

Jacqui Smiths speech to Intellect - do we have - safeguards, openness, proportionality and common sense - or a surveillance society ?

What is your definition of a "surveillance society" ? It is probably not the same as Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's still secret definition.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, like her Labour party fellow travellers, seems to be spewing Orwellian doublethink and newspeak, where normal sounding English words, have their meanings utterly reversed, without displaying any sense of shame, or pang of conscience, at their perversion.

Safeguards, openness, proportionality and common sense.

From now on, all of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's policy statements will be analysed with these categories in mind. We suspect that she will be found wanting in all of them.

Unfortunately these weasel worded soundbites, which touch on several topics about which Spy Blog regularly comments on, are the current Government's substitute for detailed, practical, cost effective policies:

Apologies for the length of this blog article fisking of this speech, but she uttered a lot of weasel words which need to be challenged:

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Home Secretary's speech: Protecting rights, protecting society

16 December 2008

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith delivered this speech to the Intellect Trade Association on December 16, 2008.

Today I'd like to address one of the most pressing questions we face as a modern society - how we secure our rights and liberties as individuals, at the same time as ensuring the wider protection of all in our society against terrorism, crime and disorder.

Balancing these individual and collective rights has always been a key responsibility of government.

One which this increasingly repressive and authoritarian, yet morally weak, Labour government, has failed to get right.

Full post as published by Spy Blog on December 16, 2008 (boomark / email).