Appalling Crackdown on Freedom

In an appalling crackdown on free speech by the Tories, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has
outlined proposals to criminalise political opinion, placing it into the same camp as murderous Islamic terrorism. Remember, this is the same party that introduced the insidious Investigatory Powers Act; a draconian piece of legalisation that permits the UK government to hack the devices of innocent citizens on an individual basis, in bulk, overseas or otherwise, via what they term “equipment interference”. It also demands that internet service providers ISP’s collect and retain details of every website visited by users over a twelve month period, handing it over at the whim of the government and other agencies.

Such powers have been illegally used against the population for some time, as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal made clear in a case brought by Privacy International, stating:

“…the security services operated an illegal regime to collect vast amounts of communications data, tracking individual phone and web use and other confidential personal information, without adequate safeguards or supervision for 17 years.”

This is on top of the revelations brought into the public domain by Edward Snowden in 2013, concerning Five Eyes or SIGINT a joint cooperation by a number of countries to spy on its own citizens. Article 8 of the European convention of human rights (ECHR) states: 

(1) Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
(2) There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The EU Charter, Article 7 continues in a similar vein stating:

Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.

Certainly the introduction into law of the Investigatory Powers Act undermines such provisions and underlines the reasons why the Tories seem keen to do away with the European convention of human rights, whilst retaining post-Brexit, all other ties. In a clever move they have hoodwinked large swathes of the population into believing that they wish to “tear up” the European convention of human rights”, masking such an act as an anti-European Union expression, when instead it leaves them able to undermine the rights and freedoms of their own citizenry.

The Tories and Labour before them have systematically undermined freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and political freedom, we see such behaviour enacted globally now, as those considered right-wing find their sites taken down or blocked, their Youtube videos demonetarised and overt censorship implemented by all of the big social media companies, who now hold a monopoly on the dissemination of thought and opinion. Small start ups are bought out by these larger companies or denied a platform as in the case of Gab, which in effect denies differing opinion. On the street we see evermore violence against those considered right-wing with “punch a Nazi”slogans and organised assaults upon peaceful protestors.

This denial of free speech to those on the right is not a new thing in the UK, with an ever-ready orchestrated press response, the aforementioned violent left-wing, the destruction of lives, employment and personal futures and a“No platform” policy, even for elected representatives with a complete lack of alternative political viewpoints permitted in the public square. Given this, the only option available was for the Right to retreat online, which has proved successful in conveying a differing political point of view, if indeed it is rather ineffectual offline.  With Rudd’s announcement the country moves from a two party non-changeable state towards further Leftist authoritarianism, with absolutely no Right counter.