Privacy, security and public opinion

David Hansen davidh at spidacom.co.uk
Fri, 2 Jun 2000 16:40:13 +0100


On 2 Jun 00, at 11:36, Brian Gladman wrote:

A very good posting.

> As a result many people are losing faith in Parliament
> and are, in consequence, turning to other ways of getting their
> message across.

Very much so. Whether this makes things worse or better is  a 
matter of debate.

Personally I think the days of representative democracy, where one 
sends a representative off on a horse to some place to represent 
oneself, are rapidly coming to an end. Abuses of the process like 
RIP are only adding more nails.

> And once
> the weaknesses become evident the Home Office response is not to
> accept these and work with us to overcome them but rather to shut down
> the dialogue and hope that they can simply ignore our concerns.

They are ignoring our concerns, but time will show that we were 
right. The officials/party politicians concerned can only hope they 
have retired/moved jobs when the shit hits the fan. This may have 
been possible in the past, but things develop so rapidly now that this 
will not be possible in the future. Officials/party politicians have been 
unable to move out of the way fast enough in recent years.
 
> But while the Home Office can win the battle by behaving in this way,
> they can't win the war

Agreed. Unfortunately the Home Office are not switched on enough 
to realise this.

> If the Home Office were truly interested in a safe and just society

Totally non-serious thought for a Friday afternoon, has anyone ever 
asked you if you are naive:-)




 David Hansen | davidh@spidacom.co.uk  | PGP email preferred
 Edinburgh    | CI$ number 100024,3247 | key number F566DA0E