In 2013, the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the British spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), tapped fibre-optic cables for access to our personal communications (including emails, Facebook posts, internet histories, and phone calls), and then shared this information with the National Security Agency (NSA), the major spy agency in the US. The Snowden…
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This is the dissertation I wrote for my Philosophy undergraduate degree in 2012. Some of the statistics may be a bit out of date, but recent developments in drug liberalisation (such as in the US) and research on the illicit drug trade – as well as the therapeutic application of certain illicit drugs – are still…
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David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May have assured us that the Data Retention and Investigation Powers Bill (DRIP) does not give the government new surveillance powers. Yet despite these assurances, privacy campaigners, civil liberties groups and lawyers argue that this new Bill – also known as the ‘snoopers’ charter’ – gives the government exactly these…
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The NHS plans to launch a giant central database which will see patients records extracted from GP systems across the country. This is known as the ‘Care.data scheme’. This is a completely new move – patient data has never been collected from GPs before as it is usually considered confidential and for their eyes only.…
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A bill has just been passed which many are claiming will undermine free speech, free protest, the democratic process and trade unions. But you wouldn’t have guessed this from the apparently benign name of the bill: the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014. To express the true nature of this…
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