As you are probably aware, Nosy-parker in chief Theresa May wants to record all the internet activity and emails of everyone in the UK, just in case you do something the government thinks is wrong (or decides is wrong sometime later down the line should you become “Politically inconvenient”).
One wily UK citizen recently did a very British act of defiance and, using the Freedom of Information Act, requested CCDP like information for just one UK individual, namely Theresa May.
Since she is so keen on snooping on the rest of us, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.
After a certain amount of back and forth the request was unsurprisingly denied. What I find interesting is that the request was denied on cost grounds due to the breadth of the request. This begs the obvious question: if the cost of obtaining this information for one person proves too costly to comply with a simple FOI request, and that by their own admission the request is too broad, how on earth can they justify doing the same for ~65 million people?
As a government minister, much of the requested information would almost certainly be recorded anyway as a matter of course.
My suspicion of course is that this request was never going to be complied with, as always there is one rule for us and another for them, cost was just a convenient excuse. In the words of Lance-Corporal Jones, “They don’t like it up ’em”.
My mother reminded me of this yesterday; here are the Liberal Democrat’s pre-election promises, posted without comment…