David Cameron has a very strange idea of freedom

Last Sunday, David Cameron marched through Paris in solidarity, so it seemed, with those who stand up for free speech. Anyone who thought he meant it must now be crying out, ‘Je suis un right Charlie!’ Hardly had the march finished than the Prime Minister had rediscovered his other side: the one which reacts to terror by threatening yet more surveillance, more state control. He has promised to revive, in the Conservative manifesto, the ‘-snooper’s charter’ which would allow the state to retain indefinitely information about every email we ever send, every telephone call we ever make.

Not only that. He added a further measure: he wants to ban all kinds of encrypted communications which the security forces struggle to decipher. ‘I think we cannot allow modern forms of communication to be exempt from the ability, in extremis, with a warrant signed by the Home Secretary, to be listened to,’ he said. The implication is that Britain could end up joining the group of countries, which includes Russia, China and Iran, where using services such as Snapchat and WhatsApp — which encrypt messages in just the way David Cameron suggests — is forbidden.

The routine has become tediously familiar, going back at least to Tony Blair’s proposal for 90 days’ detention without trial: government responds to terror attack by saying we will not be cowed, freedom will endure, or words to that effect — and then within days resolves to exploit public fear by forcing through illiberal measures. New powers are taken by the government in the name of national security — and end up being used by police to spy on journalists, or by Poole council to spy on parents whom they suspect of living outside a school catchment area.