I was surprised to read recently, on 1 April 2012, that the British government was looking at introducing laws that would allow it to monitor e-mail. Because I read that news on the 1st April, and actually thought it was an April fool’s joke, because I really could not see the British people accepting that. What happens in other countries is always very important, because politicians around the world tend to mimic each other’s laws, particularly when they are convenient to them and if a strong democracy like England is considering laws which will allow all e-mail accounts to be monitored, then you can rest assured that other countries are going to follow shortly.

Sadly, it was not an April fool’s joke and while one understands on one hand the security concerns and how terrorists can be monitored like this, the history of political and social development typically shows that these types of laws are soon abused. First, for politicians to watch their rivals and ultimately to monitor what anybody is doing. As it is, and even in America, it is widely reported that cell phone companies give state entities incredible access – to the extent that in America they even have price charts for the local police forces – for example,$2 200 for access to all that person’s phone calls and lesser fees to simply use the built-in GPS tracking and the use of the various cellular stations, to simply tell the police where the user of that phone is. We are heading more and more towards a Big Brother world, where everything you do, from the e-mails you send to the phone calls you make and where you make them from, will be monitored and we as citizens will have to monitor that very closely for our own protection.