After reports that Google allegedly mapped every single wireless Internet connection in Britain, I have tabled a Parliamentary Motion asking the Government to investigate.
There have also been reports that as many as 30 states in the U.S.A. will investigate Google because of this.
The full text of the Parliamentary Motion (328) is here:
"That this House is concerned by reports that Google allegedly mapped every single wireless internet connection in Britain, including many millions in private homes, for commercial purposes; is further concerned that the firm may have failed to disclose that it was building a massive database of wi-fi networks across the UK without people's consent; notes the reports that BT and other companies are using software to trawl social networking websites such as Facebook to identify anyone making negative comments about them; and therefore calls on the Coalition Government to balance innovation on the internet against individuals' right to privacy and the new threat of a surveillance society."
by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com
I am so pleased that you are fighting for our civil liberties, Rob, in particular since so many of our civil liberties and freedoms were so badly eroded under the last government. In common with so many others, I spent most of Labour's 13 years of office in fear of what damage they would do next to our civil liberties, our rule of law and to due process.
ReplyDeleteI am horrified by Google's actions too and would urge all of our politicians to fight this appalling encroachment into our privacy. It's not just what Google does that counts, of course. Google's intrusiveness interacts in an insidious and authoritarian manner with hundreds, if not thousands, of ill founded laws passed by Labour, each one of which chips a little more off of our precious freedoms.
Three thousand new laws enacted under Labour and most of these erode our privacy and civil liberties in one form or another: Labour's 13 years of misrule amounts to tyranny by red tape and control freaked intrusions into our private lives. Our privacy became so threatened under Labour that Privacy International black listed UK as "an Endemic Surveillance Society".
Privacy International placed UK in the same category for abuse of freedom and intrusiveness in citizens' privacy as Russia, China and other authoritarian countries. Little wonder, with just 1% of the world's population, UK has 20% to 25% of the world's surveillance cameras.
We have gone from being the freest people on earth to being the most watched people in the Western world. This must urgently be reversed and measures put in place to prevent it ever happening to again. See PI's map below:
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-559597