William Hague’s “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” is simplistic nonsense, as well he knows.
To accept it as true, you need to believe the state:
- is incapable of error
- will never draw the wrong conclusion
- employs no-one with the wrong motives, and
- is and forever will be benign.
You just cannot swallow all that! I am not talking fanciful stuff about despots in other countries:
- Miscarriages of justice are not rare
- The Metropolitan Police branded protesters occupying parts of the City of Londong in 2011-12 as terrorists.
- This week the our Government apologised and paid compensation to people tortured in the Malayan Mau Mau uprising
- And remember how Thatcher criminalized whole communities during the mining industrial dispute.
Hague is trying to engender an acceptance that everyone should be under suspicion at all times and an nil expectation of privacy – something taken to extremes in places like the former East Germany and Franco Spain, which is surely not how we want to live our lives in 21st Century Britain?