Shadow Home Secretary David Daviswarned of the increasing use of information
technologyto aid the "slow but ceaseless
encroachment of the state into our daily lives" as he quit his
parliamentary seat yesterday.
He said, "We will have the most intrusive
identity card system in the world
a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens and a
DNA database bigger than that of any dictatorship, with
thousands of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on
it."
Davis said the government was building "a
database state, opening up our private lives to the prying eyes
of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless
civil servants and criminal hackers".
"This cannot go on. It must be stopped. And for that reason,
today I feel that it is incumbent upon me to take a stand."
His shock move came as the House of Commons passed a
controversial bill to allow police to detain suspects for 42 days
without charge.
In a statement today he said, "This Sunday is the anniversary of
the signing of the
Magna
Carta, the document that guarantees the most fundamental of
British freedoms, habeas corpus, (which is) the right not to be
imprisoned for prolonged periods by the state without being told
the charge against you."
Davis intends to use the by-election for his seat to raise
questions about what he sees as the increasing use of technology to
erode personal freedoms, as well as "a sustained assault" on the
justice system "that (has) left it both less firm and less
fair".
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