Big Brother
I said in a recent post that just because a government has the ability to do something - like drop a cruise missile on my house, for example - it doesn't follow that they have a dastardly plan to do so, either now or in the foreseeable future.
So, I agreed with the sentiment expressed by Daniel Finkelstein in the Times recently in which he pokes fun at the conspiracy theorists - instead of taking them too seriously which in my view tends to puff-up their already giant egos and paranoid views.
Read my e-mail by all means. But answer it too
By Daniel Finkelstein
Over dinner, a friend asks me what I think of Edward Snowden and The Guardian. I begin one of my ponderous lectures on the difficult line between security and liberty.
My friend waits impatiently until I stop for breath, and then says that he is very worried that the American National Security Agency is reading all of his e-mails.
I respond that, on the contrary, this seems the only unambiguously welcome news in the whole saga. I haven’t remotely got time to read all of my own e-mails, so it is a great relief to discover that Edward Snowden has been reading them for me.
There is no end to the crucial information that the NSA will have gathered. A car has been left with its headlights on in the staff car park and its owner is beseeched to turn them off. The photo desk is looking for a toddler who plays chess and whose parents are willing for her to be photographed for a feature on child prodigies. Leader conference has been moved to 11.45 today.
The PR company for Transform Cosmetic Surgery feels that I would wish to know that there has been a 50 per cent increase in chin implants since 2010. Apparently £4,500 is the average cost. Patients, they say, are thrilled with them. I did not make this last e-mail up.
I am just wondering. For a small consideration, do you think that the NSA might be willing to answer some of my e-mails too?
Over dinner, a friend asks me what I think of Edward Snowden and The Guardian. I begin one of my ponderous lectures on the difficult line between security and liberty.
My friend waits impatiently until I stop for breath, and then says that he is very worried that the American National Security Agency is reading all of his e-mails.
I respond that, on the contrary, this seems the only unambiguously welcome news in the whole saga. I haven’t remotely got time to read all of my own e-mails, so it is a great relief to discover that Edward Snowden has been reading them for me.
There is no end to the crucial information that the NSA will have gathered. A car has been left with its headlights on in the staff car park and its owner is beseeched to turn them off. The photo desk is looking for a toddler who plays chess and whose parents are willing for her to be photographed for a feature on child prodigies. Leader conference has been moved to 11.45 today.
The PR company for Transform Cosmetic Surgery feels that I would wish to know that there has been a 50 per cent increase in chin implants since 2010. Apparently £4,500 is the average cost. Patients, they say, are thrilled with them. I did not make this last e-mail up.
I am just wondering. For a small consideration, do you think that the NSA might be willing to answer some of my e-mails too?
