Theresa May has suggested she may reignite plans for a ‘snoopers’ charter’, in order to provide intelligence services with greater surveillance powers. She has called for new powers in order to respond to the terror threat from British jihadists returning from the Middle East. In September 2012, Nick Cohen explained in The Spectator why a communications data bill would be a dangerous thing:
Ever since the millennium, I have wondered how long the utopian faith in the emancipatory potential of the web will last. Of course, we know the new technologies give the citizen new powers to communicate and connect. We hear this praised so loudly and so often, how could we not know? But what benefits the individual also benefits the powerful, and gives states and corporations surveillance powers the secret police forces of the 20th century could only dream of.
If you doubt me, consider how today’s scandals are technologically enabled.
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