Most people are talking about the spending review today, but there are other things going on - like the Coalition's latest abject surrender to the architects of the database state. As I was saying just the other day, ID cards may have gone, but much beside remains, a lot of it arguably worse.
Eighteen months ago, the then Labour government announced the abandonment of a £12 billion scheme to build a central database storing details of every phonecall, email and website hit made by everyone in Britain. Instead, telecoms companies and ISPs would do the dirty work, otherwise known as the Intercept Modernisation Project. Some campaigners (including Shami Chakrabarti) saw this as a welcome concession by Big Brother to the principle of privacy. Actually, it just represented a convenient cost saving.
