Governments all over the world are terrified of losing access to what the public is talking about, warning that all sorts of doomsday scenarios will happen if they can’t snoop on our every word. This despite the fact that they have never had access to this information until arguably the widespread adoption of email from the mid-90s, and particularly since the advent of social media in the mid-00s.

Prior to that they could get a warrant and tap your phone, or perhaps try to steam open your letters, but they, with the possible exception of the NSA, couldn’t do it to all people, all the time.

The internet has provided the biggest boon to the surveillance community, with Snowden revealing the NSA’s now-relistic goal to record all the information, store it and have it searchable forever.

Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society have a good article looking at the latest attempts to get the tech platforms to minimise their use of end-to-end encryption, or to provide some other way for Governments to snoop on message contents.

But we do not live in a world where that system always stays tightly confined to CSAM [child sexual abuse material], or malware scanning, and doesn’t end up enabling censorship of individuals’ private personal conversations with other people over content that is not illegal or harmful. That already happens in China (which is increasingly an object of envy by U.S. law enforcement). China uses its online censorship capabilities to keep its citizens from using WeChat to talk about Winnie the Pooh or “Tiananmen Square”. An end-to-end encrypted messaging system that would do client-side scanning of content against a blacklist before it’s encrypted and report the positive hits? China would rush to fund that work, and likely already has.

The whole article is worth a read, but it’s important to recognise the end-goal.

The rationale may change — national security and terrorism one day, and if that doesn’t work, child abuse the next — but the goal is the same: for governments to have the ability to eavesdrop on your every conversation, the legal power to require that all your conversations be recorded, and the authority to make private-sector providers do their bidding in the process. To have total control. And, if they really succeed, they will reach the ultimate goal: to not even need to exert that control to restrict what you say and do and hear and think — because you’ll do that yourself. You will save them, and Facebook, a lot of time.

Freedom continues to be eroded.

Internet service providers are to keep records of emails and online phone calls under controversial new government regulations that come into force today.

ISPs will be legally obliged to store details of emails and internet telephony for 12 months as a potential tool to aid criminal investigations. Although the content of emails and calls will not be held, ISPs will be asked to record the date, time, duration and recipients of online communications.

The new regulations are contained in an EC directive on data retention that already applies to telecoms providers and is now being extended to ISPs.

People would be up in arms if the UK Government decided to just allocate them each a policeman to follow you around and record all details of your everyday life, yet with laws like these and the prevalence of CCTV cameras, that’s essentially what’s happening.

It seems we continue to be our own worst enemies and the powers that be seem determined to do Bin Laden’s dirty work for him. The G20 have been meeting in the UK this week, and as is usual at these things, people protest. Given the current economic climate, who could blame them really.

Yes, there are always a few idiots determined to cause violence, but the majority of protesters don’t cause any trouble and are just exercising their democratic rights. In the UK in particular, those rights are slowly disappearing. After the protest was finished yesterday, everyone was herded, and coralled and detained against their will for up to eight hours. Once the police finally decided to let them leave, they were required to provide their name, address and have their photos taken. I think it’s a pretty sad reflection of our times, and a complete abuse of power.

This is a strategy called the “kettle”, which sees protesters herded into an area and kept there for hours. Its stated aim is to contain a protest in a small area so it does not spread.

It was justified by the former assistant commissioner (special operations) at the Met, Andy Hayman, in an article in the Times earlier this week.

“Tactics to herd the crowd into a pen … have been criticised before, yet the police will not want groups spilintering away from the crowd,” he wrote.

The containment was backed up at the Bank, first with mounted police and then with police dogs. As people were eventually allowed to leave at about 8pm, they were funnelled out down a narrow exit with a police officer grabbing them by the arm as though they were under arrest, again regardless of age or demeanour.

One officer, asked why people were not allowed to leave under their own steam, replied: “They might fall over.”

People were then asked for their name and address and required to have a photograph taken. They are not obliged to do so under the law, but those who refused were put back in the pen.

Hot on the heels of that are details of the new eBorders scheme, in which the UK police intend keeping a database of every journey on public transport within the UK!

The records of the movements of 60 million domestic passengers will be kept by the police and, if current trends are anything to go by, used for much more than counter-terrorism operations. Not content with introducing what will in effect be an exit visa – you must supply more than 50 pieces of information before you leave the country or will not be able to travel – the government is now erecting internal borders.

A Home Office spokesman confirmed to Lewis the measures would “require passengers to show photo ID, such as a driving licence or the (proposed) government ID cards, when booking tickets for domestic air and sea journeys”.