It’s here
No I’m not dead. Not yet anyway. However, I have been insanely busy ensuring we comply with yet more new laws.
Yes indeedy, it’s the moment we’ve all been dreading. From Monday new legislation comes in which requires all mobile calls, emails and website visits of every person in Britain to be stored for the minimum of a year. The new powers will not (as yet) require storage of the content of emails or phone calls but it will show details such as IP addresses, date, time and user telephone numbers so that all U.K. citizens can effectively be located and traced at any given moment. As I blogged recently, in due course this will be extended so that all database information which is held or purchased by the government will be collated under a centrally controlled super-database which will contain a map of everyone’s private life.
For the record, we will be fully complying with the new law. For those who talk passionately about freedom, about liberty, about fighting the-powers-that-be, yes, yes, I know. But let’s see whether you feel so goddamn brave when the cops turn up on your doorstep.
Anyhoo, after lengthy discussions during the last few weeks about the future of Fluffytek, despite all the new censorship legislation Rich and I have decided that we really are frightfully fond of photography and it would simply hurt too much to give it up. Besides, it's not illegal, not yet anyway. Rich will hopefully return to creating in a few months time when his crippling workload allows, and in the meantime I’ll be back to blogging later on next week - if anyone is still reading this, that is.
Amy in high-key
Yes indeedy, it’s the moment we’ve all been dreading. From Monday new legislation comes in which requires all mobile calls, emails and website visits of every person in Britain to be stored for the minimum of a year. The new powers will not (as yet) require storage of the content of emails or phone calls but it will show details such as IP addresses, date, time and user telephone numbers so that all U.K. citizens can effectively be located and traced at any given moment. As I blogged recently, in due course this will be extended so that all database information which is held or purchased by the government will be collated under a centrally controlled super-database which will contain a map of everyone’s private life.
For the record, we will be fully complying with the new law. For those who talk passionately about freedom, about liberty, about fighting the-powers-that-be, yes, yes, I know. But let’s see whether you feel so goddamn brave when the cops turn up on your doorstep.
Anyhoo, after lengthy discussions during the last few weeks about the future of Fluffytek, despite all the new censorship legislation Rich and I have decided that we really are frightfully fond of photography and it would simply hurt too much to give it up. Besides, it's not illegal, not yet anyway. Rich will hopefully return to creating in a few months time when his crippling workload allows, and in the meantime I’ll be back to blogging later on next week - if anyone is still reading this, that is.
Amy in high-key
posted by Lin at 2:46 PM
15 Comments:
Oh - I'll still be here - to savor whatever you can salvage out of your governments shredding of your civil and personal liberties and freedoms.
Tis dark days ahead m'laday. Just wait until they bring back public floggings.
D.L. Wood
Of course we're reading you, it's a good start to my day. Hang tight this too will pass.
Thanks guys - good to have a couple of folks still reading :-)
I'm sure there are more than a couple folks still stopping by. I check in every day to see if you've graced us with some new wisdom.
Yay, Lin is back!!!!
I hate it when you aren't blogging! Of course, I completely thoroughly understand why you weren't, more than you will ever know! Naw, you do know.
I'm reading. Everyday. Even though there is nothing to read, I look anyway. Hurry back.
Still reading - just picked up an old computer to keep my 2257 records on - entirely separate from any other records I may have, as the law (unconstitutional though it be) mandates. Going to start with Stephen's organizational ideas.....
Keep blogging - you are the first blog I check every morning.
You're in my daily blogroll and I faithfully check here often.
In the futuristic science fiction television series "Bablyon 5," the Earth government had been taken over by a fascist regime. At one point, a ship belonging to a potentially threatening alien race had been discovered.
It turned out that the fascist government was secretly in league with these aliens, but a public warning was made about them. One of the government people then said this: we can use this alien threat as an excuse to crack down even more on people's freedom, in the name of 'security.'
Does this scenario sound a bit familiar??? People like us who live in "free" countries tend to think that "it can't happen here," but as history has shown (and as "Bablyon 5" tried to show), it can.
Or, to paraphrase the great American patriot Benjamin Franklin: those people who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.
D'ya know Dave, I'd forgotten that part of B5, and to think it was my favourite ever sci-fi series too!
If we have to live life in a movie, I just wish it felt more like we were living in the B5 world rather than in V for Vendetta or 1984, which is what it actually feels like.
I understand what you're saying.
I'm thinking of going away for a week or so in September and had considered the UK, but as I don't want to have my film confiscated just because a police officer may happen to be in the background of a photo somewhere, I think I'll have to institute a boycott - just like I'm boycotting places like Iran. (Not that the UK is as bad as Iran - yet! - but from the UK I expect better.)
Did you see the clips of the G20 protests? Cameras all over the place snapping closeups of cops - they didn't pay any attention. But just be a solitary photog and watch what happens.....
The worst fear comes when we start censoring ourselves. That is the time when we no longer control our Government and we make an attempt to hide ourselves from them.
I'll still be here.
Good to see things are OK and Rich is still shooting some very fine art works. It seems busy all the way around here as well, life, work, family all takes its toll on time. Pip Pip Carry on ...
The stupidity of this is if I'm a terrorist, I'm not walking around with a (very obvious) camera snapping pics of whatever, I'm surreptitiously using a cell phone to snap those pics... or maybe one of those tiny little Japanese film cameras they used to sell (mail order) in comic books. It's easy to be clandestine with a camera if being clandestine is your goal.
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