Deniable Snoopery, Macrofraternal Listeninity

The Minister for Dawn Raids and Deportations has evidently been informed - perhaps by someone in the Obama administration - that certain aspects of the surveillance state make for bad public relations. The empty suit has announced that he has dropped plans to make the DNA data, tax records, medical files and miscellaneous other information about much of the population available to the police, Whitehall departments, the private companies which pay those who run the Whitehall departments, and miscellaneous public bodies. Of course, the fact that a New New Labour minister has announced the dropping of a measure can hardly be taken as indicating that it will in fact be dropped; but given New New Labour's abiding concern with operating inside the law at all times, and ensuring that ministers and the private companies which run them do likewise, I am sure somebody or other will be jolly reassured.