The UK: "the most spied-on citizens on earth" now includes Members of Parliament

is it somehow comforting to know that citizens in the uk may actually be more spied-on than citizens in the u.s...? does knowing that tony blair is just as zealous in his intelligence-gathering activities as george bush ease my mind...? do i think that the uk is as committed as the u.s. in taking strong steps to protect its citizens...?

Tony Blair is preparing to scrap a 40-year ban on tapping MPs' telephones, despite fierce Cabinet opposition, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

He is expected to formally announce to the Commons within weeks that MPs can no longer be sure that the security services and others will not intercept their communications.

Until now, successive administrations have pledged that there should be no tapping "whatsoever" of MPs' phones, and that they would be told if it was necessary to breach the ban.

But that convention - known as the Wilson Doctrine, after Harold Wilson, the prime minister who introduced it - is to be abandoned in an expansion of MI5 powers following the London bombings.

MPs should be treated in the same way as other citizens and will be given the same safeguards against wrongful tapping, the Prime Minister will say.

[...]

There has been a marked expansion of surveillance in Britain since 1997. New technology and new laws mean that Britons are among the most spied-on citizens on earth.

in a word... no... and i'm sure the one uses the other to justify his criminality... we're in deep shit in this world, ya know... very deep...

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