The letters continue to pour in about my July 4 column, in which I worried about the United Kingdom’s descent toward a surveillance society. The ones that alarm me the most — thankfully there haven’t been many — suggest that the only people who should worry about pervasive surveillance are the ones who “have something to hide.”
That pernicious logic is what leads us toward a police state. It also kills the very qualities we need most in a fast-changing world — risk-taking, innovation and just about everything else that matters.
Some powerful members of Congress appear to understand the threat. I find some of U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s political positions disturbing, to put it mildly, but he’s well-clued on this one.
Coincidentally, the Daily Telegraph newspaper here in London has just launched a campaign on behalf of freedom. It includes articles highlighting the British government’s extreme anti-liberty stance and editorials asking readers to demand the return of basic freedoms.
As the Telegraph’s editor, Charles Moore, wrote the other day: “The cant phrase always used to justify the restriction of freedom is ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’. It is almost always untrue. The innocent suffer unfairly from every intrusion and restriction; indeed, their innocence is no longer presumed.”
I applaud the newspaper’s stand. I wish more papers, on both sides of the Atlantic, had this kind of common sense.