proportionality

Family's shock at council spying (BBC News, Friday, 11 April 2008)

In 2005, Tony Blair said:

Any such powers should only be undertaken with the greatest of hesitation and only in circumstances that demand it.

(Blair defends house arrest plans, BBC News, Wednesday, 2 February, 2005)

Such NuLabour rhetoric is far from original. The enabling act (Ermächtigungsgesetz), which was passed on 24 March 1933, granted Hitler full legislative powers. A day before, Hitler had said in the Krolloper:

Die Regierung wird von dieser Ermächtigung nur insoweit Gebrauch machen, als dies zur Durchführung der lebensnotwendigen Maßnahmen erforderlich ist. [...] Die Zahl der Fälle, in denen eine innere Notwendigkeit vorliegt, zu einem solchen Gesetz die Zuflucht zu nehmen, ist an sich eine begrenzte.

(The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures. [...] The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one.)

The RIP Act was presented to us as an instrument to fight paedophilia and terrorism, but it is now being used to monitor school applications for three-year-olds.

Are you afraid of losing your civil liberties? Then wake up, you no longer have any.

Addendum: Spy law 'used in dog fouling war' (BBC News, Sunday, 27 April 2008)