Creeping intrusions

AFTER TALKING TO Technolotics for a podcast about digital rights in Ireland, I got an email from Declan who thinks the current trends among law enforcement departments across the globe is to invoke fear in order to convince people to give up more of their privacy. Accordingly, we hear reasons from the Irish Minister for Justice that point to the need to ease movement across the common travel area with the UK, to track terrorists and to care for elderly who want to live independently. Declan thinks the real reason for these intrusive measures is to give more power to those who enjoy controlling and intruding in our lives. For my part, I resent the government spending my tax money on data collection procedures that offer me no clawback if and when my data are compromised. Show me the teeth in the regulations before you give some curious civil servant unrestrained access to my datasets. If you can't do that, then use the data Google has on me but don't share my stuff across departments without proper safeguards.

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