We now know, thanks to Edward Snowden that GCHQ knowingly perpetrated a mass surveillance programme for which there was no adequate legal authorisation and then sought to stifle any public debate which might generate a challenge under privacy laws.
GCHQ used a clandestine security electronic surveillance programme called Tempora to gain access to large amounts of internet users’ personal data. This is quite frankly appalling on it own. The main telecoms companies lied in response to the Tempora revelations by declaring they simply complied with the law, when in fact they far exceeded what the law provided for.
We now know that the Home Office and GCHQ campaigned to reject the use of intercepts as evidence and not as they said at the time, because of the risk to national security, but because it would expose how far they had gone beyond the law, including accessing communications networks abroad. The governance of Britain’s power institutions has all but collapsed as indeed George Orwell predicted. The ineffective intelligence and security committee should be swept away and replaced by a powerful select committee responsible to Parliament and the people.
But all is not lost a powerful movement is devolpoing lead by Students and the Pensioner movement. What a contrast, but united with ordinary people a force to be reckoned with.
We have all had enough of corruption and lies and a social system that simply does not work.
Ivor Timson 