Striking the Balance

[Ian G Batten]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, James Hammerton wrote:
> Recording everyone's communications data and storing it for a year or
> more, as Blunkett is proposing under the ATCS Act, is mass
> surveillance!

Of course, there's a variation on ``if a tree falls in a forest and
there is no one to hear it, does it make a noise'' here.  Apologists for
the Home Office would claim that stockpiling data but not processing it
is not surveillance.  By that logic, they won't mind my (*) installing a
camera in their bedrooms so long as I promise not to look at the
pictures.

ian

(*) Whenever I use that construction, I am always put in mind of
Molesworth hunting gerunds.