VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|Rev John Bell of the Iona Community  |CONTENT|[b]Rating[/b] 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130628.html][img=images/2013/06/pic130628.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]There's been a lot of fuss lately about the USA and the UK intercepting every single phone call, email, text, social media update and website visit, storing them in vast databases, trawling through them with complex software, figuring out who all our friends and acquaintances are, what our interests are, constructing personality profiles, social networks and deciding what crimes we might possibly be guilty of.

Russia and China are naturally jealous. They thought they had the upper hand in the surveillance stakes. Now it turns out they're just a bunch of amateurs compared to the free countries of the West. Which is why they're not so keen to co-operate in the case of [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23084166]Edward Snowden[/url], who viciously revealed what our governments have been up to.

There's a great deal of hypocrisy about this. Many of the civil liberties groups and human rights organisations that keep going on about a right to privacy and being innocent until proven guilty, and all that rubbish, are forever posting gossip and tittle-tattle on their websites. A massacre here, a genocide there, it's enough to make any self respecting totalitarian autocrat just die of embarrassment. I know Jesus, who was the visible bit of the Invisible Magic Friend, said that every whisper was to be shouted from the rooftops, but clearly that's just plain wrong.

That's why the government has given a [url=http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2013/06/26/what-s-going-up-and-down-cuts-cuts-and-more-cuts]3.4% increase[/url] to our heroic security services, people who can be trusted with our secrets. They're ever so discrete. They won't post what they know about you on Facebook. They won't go around telling your friends and work colleagues. In fact, they won't even tell you about it, at least, not until they knock on your door at four in the morning with a trusted troop of friendly officers carrying automatic weapons.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01c104w]Listen/Read[/url]|CATEGORIES|16|IP-ADDRESS|94.168.119.214|CREATEDBY|admin|DATE|1372405952
