I used to think a lot of things were justified, because on balance they would help to protect innocent people against relatively minor illegal activities, and while they could theoretically be used for major abuses by governments no democratically elected administration would ever get away with doing it. Many of those had to do with balancing everyone being accountable under the law with anonymity and privacy.
Unlike some people, I prefer to learn the lessons of history and change my views when the evidence warrants, and I am increasingly of the view that the democratic accountability of our governments is far too weak and the price of trusting governments with the power afforded by a surveillance state is far too high to pay for some modest benefits.
A case in point: 'omh mentioned the London Congestion Charge in another post to this discussion, linking to news that (contrary to clear assurances given when the cameras were rolled out) the London mayor now wants to give police direct access to the cameras. Now, to be fair, this isn't an absurd idea: no doubt these cameras do help to catch some people who are trying to escape justice after breaking the law (they are careful to cite examples of this) and reportedly this was in the Mayor's manifesto at the last election so it does have some degree of democratic mandate.
Of course, there have also been stories where the system has gone horribly wrong and incorrectly fined people[1], or just not been understood and penalised people who were trying to behave reasonably and do the right thing[2]. Given that the way our court system works means that it can be prohibitively expensive to challenge automated penalty notices issued by such systems if you live a long way away and were just visiting (assuming you really were ever there in the first place) I have significant reservations about how easy this kind of "enforcement" becomes under a surveillance state, and whether even the genuine benefits of better enforcement against minor offenders are enough to justify such schemes, which makes me even less trusting of the long-term motivations of those involved.
[1] I can't immediately find a link, but the one I most remember was an elderly gentlemen who lived in the north of England and rarely if ever visited London any more, yet who wound up getting many fines sent to him, presumably because someone cloned his plates.
> major abuses by governments no democratically elected administration would ever get away with doing it
Far too many abusers were elected in democratic elections. The key is not only have democratic elections (and legal mechanisms to remove abusers when needed - to prevent coups), but actual checks and balances that can, effectively, prevent abuses and punish and remove abusers.
Indeed. I think coming to similar conclusions over the years is the main thing that has changed my view. The absence of either a formal written constitution or any power of recall over our elected representatives in my country, combined with a lot of "arm's length" parts of government where people with real power aren't directly accountable to the electorate anyway, do not tend to promote effective checks and balances.
There are probably some arcane Parliamentary mechanisms where some sort of no confidence vote might trigger that result, but we don't directly elect the leader of our government, who by convention is the leader of the dominant political party in the House of Commons[1], nor the various ministers of state who will have executive authority (who are appointed by the PM[2]). This is probably the most significant of the "arm's length" mechanisms I mentioned before.
This can lead to obvious abuses of the system like Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister in the final years of the New Labour administration, even though the electorate were promised repeatedly and explicitly at the last general election before that happened that anyone voting for New Labour was voting for Tony Blair to serve a full third term and would not get Gordon Brown as PM.
In fact, that situation is a textbook example of why I think a power of recall is long overdue. Whatever your political views or your opinion of the individual politicians involved, the facts are clear, the people exercised their right to vote on the one chance they were given, and then they got something they had explicitly been told they wouldn't get and had no recourse.
[1] Slightly different things may happen in a coalition where no party has an outright majority, as we discovered recently, but the position is still determined by the make-up of Parliament rather than a direct vote by the general population.
[2] Technically speaking, a lot of this is probably up to Her Majesty, but I suspect any refusal by the monarch to follow convention in this respect would start the countdown to our becoming a republic, so I consider this a formality.
A vote of no confidence in the HoC is constitutionally a signal for the PM to resign, but it's just a custom (which some PMs, notably Pitt, have ignored).
The PM is appointed by the Sovereign, and actually doesn't need to be an MP. While there's doubt over whether a Sovereign would appoint someone who isn't, it would be constitionally simple to shuffle them off to a safe seat. So no, it's not simple to get rid of a bad PM at all.
I used to think a lot of things were justified, because on balance they would help to protect innocent people against relatively minor illegal activities, and while they could theoretically be used for major abuses by governments no democratically elected administration would ever get away with doing it. Many of those had to do with balancing everyone being accountable under the law with anonymity and privacy.
Unlike some people, I prefer to learn the lessons of history and change my views when the evidence warrants, and I am increasingly of the view that the democratic accountability of our governments is far too weak and the price of trusting governments with the power afforded by a surveillance state is far too high to pay for some modest benefits.
A case in point: 'omh mentioned the London Congestion Charge in another post to this discussion, linking to news that (contrary to clear assurances given when the cameras were rolled out) the London mayor now wants to give police direct access to the cameras. Now, to be fair, this isn't an absurd idea: no doubt these cameras do help to catch some people who are trying to escape justice after breaking the law (they are careful to cite examples of this) and reportedly this was in the Mayor's manifesto at the last election so it does have some degree of democratic mandate.
Of course, there have also been stories where the system has gone horribly wrong and incorrectly fined people[1], or just not been understood and penalised people who were trying to behave reasonably and do the right thing[2]. Given that the way our court system works means that it can be prohibitively expensive to challenge automated penalty notices issued by such systems if you live a long way away and were just visiting (assuming you really were ever there in the first place) I have significant reservations about how easy this kind of "enforcement" becomes under a surveillance state, and whether even the genuine benefits of better enforcement against minor offenders are enough to justify such schemes, which makes me even less trusting of the long-term motivations of those involved.
[1] I can't immediately find a link, but the one I most remember was an elderly gentlemen who lived in the north of England and rarely if ever visited London any more, yet who wound up getting many fines sent to him, presumably because someone cloned his plates.
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/23/congesti...