Hands Off Our Emails

This isn't just the petulant cry of Derek Draper during the events or the weekend but is the opinion according to a poll on PoliticsHome.com

The poll is in response to the EU directive requiring all phone calls, e-mails and Internet hits be stored for a year which came into effect last Monday. The survey also highlights that 56 per cent are worried about the possibility of a 'Big Brother state' and 63 per cent believe the government holds too much information already on individuals.

It shows how out of touch the Government are with public opinion about having so much of their personal data being cached. 58 per cent of those surveyed agree with the statement: 'There is no such thing as secure data storage. It inevitably gets into the wrong hands.'

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said:

"This survey demonstrates what we have said for some time, that the government
has lost touch with public opinion on the importance of personal privacy. This is the clearest signal that it's high time the supertanker was turned around."

So with the public wakening up to the ineptitude of Government data storage and the sheer volume of data the Government is seeking to hold is starting to break through, even with Labour voters. It is the infringement into more or more of our personal space that is started to tip the public consciousness.

For a long time some of us have been warning that if we kept allowing the Government to move forward the line into our privacy we'd find it hard to stop when we woke up to the extent they had reached. Hoarding details on us after we may well have deleted them, securely stored them, or whatever, when we all know this Government's reputation for losing such things is what has finally made the public wake up.