Britain¹s Surveillance Society Slides Towards Stasi-Style Snooping

Top Government aide Richard Thomas warned this week that Britain is on the
slippery slope to becoming a Big Brother state, facing a¹ growing danger of
East German Stasi-style snooping.¹

The Information Minister singled out government plans for a national
database of every child and compulsory ID cards as particular reasons for
alarm, telling the Times ŒI don¹t think people have woken up to what lies
behind this.²

His concerns echoed those expressed in the Observer last month, which warned
that Œthe combination of new technology and the indifference of New Labour
to individual freedom means that a version of the Big Brother phenomenon is
being invented before our eyes.¹

While The Observer singled out Labour, far right Conservative politician
William Hague indicated his own party would be even more intolerant of
Œindividual freedoms¹ if elected in the future in his weekly column in the
News Of The World.

³In matters of law and order, it¹s only when civil liberties groups start
squealing that you know you¹re getting somewhere,² the former Conservative
leader sneered.

According to the Standard, surveillance is so extensive that the average
Londoner is caught on camera at least 300 times a day, reflecting the
childhood experiences of superstar DJ Paul Van Dyk, who was monitored by the
Stasi as a teenager growing up in East Berlin.

³As a kid it was like playing cat and mouse, it had a fun element to it as
well, especially as a kid, because you didn¹t understand the whole picture
of what was going on,² Paul told Skrufff earlier this year.

³My Mum quite often pointed things out, for example, there was an apartment
across the street from us that had this weird mirror set up by their window
where they could see who was going in and out of our door. Stuff like that
went on all the time,² he said.

As well as being spied on by neighbours, Paul and his mother were frequently
interrogated, after the authorities learned they wished to escape to the
West.

³We had to go randomly to the Ministry of Internal Affairs which was the
official constitutional headquarters of the Stasi- the secret service,² he
recalled.

³We were questioned regularly- why did we want to leave the country- Who
were our friends inside the country and outside the country-¹ All that kind
of stuff. That happened randomly though regularly,² said Paul.

Paul Van Dyk plays Gatecrasher @ Heaven on Friday August 27.

(ŒDESPAIRING Tories are calling for the return of William Hague as leader
to revive their dying party . . .¹)


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