The secret service

Recently I heard Dame Stella Rimington (erstwhile head of MI5) mentioning on the radio (on the show about statistics!) about the Stasi, the E. German secret service, and how they amassed a huge amount of information without much idea about what to do with it.

She seemed to think that the same problem could be encountered today but now with computer data analysis I'm not so sure.

Unfortunately, when people are paid to find the danger within, they find that there is danger within, and they are perfectly prepared to allow circumstantial evidence to override the benefit of the doubt. I have just been reading (in the Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver) about McCarthy era America and the ridiculous idea of  Unamerican Activities. The secret service can be bloody dangerous if they decide you are suspicious, and they may be prepared to "fit you up" if there is not enough evidence. They are sometimes a law unto themselves. The Amercians have such a history of internal spying that the idea that they should be free to live without being spied on is seen as Unamerican. Disloyal. You have to feel sympathy for that strange conundrum; all that rhetoric about freedom and at the same time the gvt has a licence to spy on you. You have freedom to be the person the authorities say you can be. That's a strange kind of freedom.

During the 1950s Charlie Chaplin came under suspicion for having liberal opinions (he wasn't a communist) and he was almost forced to lie about his opinions or leave the USA. He left. His autobiography, which I recommend highly, describes the process which encouraged him to leave, hurriedly, because he felt afraid. 

Poor Edward Snowden, he seems very genuinely worried about freedoms, and I guess shortly he will be extradited, tried and imprisoned and have no freedom at all.