As the "Competition of Liars" sometimes called the General Election, hots up, and the various liars get their knickers in a twist about how to out spin each other, the topic of "austerity" is never far from their lips. No matter how they bandy the word about, none of them will mention the billions wasted on the attempt at total surveillance of the citizens of this country.
Until the revelations of Edward Snowden emerged just a few years back in 2013, British citizens had no idea as to the level of state surveillance they were subjected to. The government, without due process, debate or permission installed a massive taxpayer funded spying system via its domestic agency GCHQ, to tap into internet cables and build an enormous and detailed database of the communications of every man, woman and child in the country with little to no legal oversight. An ID system is no longer relevant, they have far more information than an ID card could ever store.
The amount of your tax money that is swallowed up in GCHQ is staggering, with the lie that it is all about protecting us from those nasty foreigners. However, the truth is that billions pounds are gobbled up peeking into the actions of your everyday life. You are permanently under their microscope, listened to, watched and profiled, all of us.
GCHQ’s 360 degree full spectrum bulk collection data system was constructed in brazen and arrogant defiance of Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Britain’s parliament never debated or approved this massive construction programme as it would for any national infrastructure project. Every phone call, no matter the device is recorded, every image, website visited, personal details such as medical and financial records, contacts, everything private to you is no longer private.
Although no-one truly knows the costs of UK state surveillance systems over its own population, it is estimated that the cost to the taxpayer just for the storage of all this data exceeds £20 million a month. And whilst GCHQ’s individual budget isn’t public knowledge, its funding comes from the Single Intelligence Account (SIA), which by all accounts has now reached something in the order (£18 billion as at 2015) £20 billion plus.
One can only guess that provision for GCHQ’s funding is exponentially increasing in an age of austerity where the NHS is in chaos, emergency services such as the fire-brigade and ambulance services to name just two are being stripped bare or privatised. People are dying at the hands of the state and yet we are told there is no money to pay for these vital services. And yet the taxpayer is still funding bank-bailouts, wars in far-off lands that pose zero threat to national security and a new architecture of state surveillance constructed that would make the East German Stasi blush three decades ago.
£20 million a month just to store who you phoned last week, where you shopped yesterday, what pub you went to at the weekend. Think of an extra £20 million a month on mental health care?
Is this the type of society you want? Do you honestly think any one of the political bandwagons standing in this "Competition of Liars" will demolish this insidious prying spy system? Don't be so naive, look at history, we are still struggling for equality, we are still struggling for a decent standard of living, our actions are under ever increasing surveillance, despite the fact we have had the full spectrum of political parties, each wearing the crown for varying periods. The system is loaded against us, it is the system we have to change, not the crown prince or the label on the box.
Read the full article from Tarcoteca HERE:
