RE: Government Noses

[Watkin Simon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]

> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 04 September 2003 16:06
> 
> The trouble is Simon, that the recent Government advertising 
> compaign aginst 
> homelessness glorified in making the citizens - all of them - 
> afraid of the 
> power of government to see everything read everything hera 
> everything and 
> generally - nothing is left private anymore.

Did you mean homelessness or did you mean the "We're on to you" campaign
against benefit fraud?
 
> It is a disgraceful campaign,

Do you mean this?
http://www.targetingbenefitfraud.gov.uk/on_to_you_adverts.html

> and it uses exactly the fear 
> you ridicule as 
> an implicit threat against anybody who might one day come up 
> against the 
> government. 

If you do mean the DWP campaign, where's the threat against "anybody" as
opposed to the threat against those cheating the benefit system?

> Benefit claimants individually are _not_ generally 
> fraudsters,

Agreed.

> and when they 
> are they are not serious crime,

Not individuals.  But where you have organised groups it amounts to serious
crime.

> but they are all made to feel 
> cheap and of 
> nil-value by your employer's advertising. 

Not sure why.  The campaign is very clearly about those who defraud and
cheat the benefit system.  There might be a much more difficult issue there
about the most disadvantaged in society for whom working and claiming
benefit is a fact of life.
 
> The paranoia you ridicule is exactly encouraged and fostered 
> by the civil 
> servant who implemented the campaign.

This takes us back to Brian Beesley's comment about the person mowing lawns
and claiming benefit.  Government agencies are not, as he put it
"overhearing all private conversations" and whilst the benefit claimant
"might be worried about the Government overhearing a conversation about a
lawnmower extension lead", he/she ought not to be as that isn't going to
happen.  My job is to work towards convincing the likes those reading this
list of that.  And, yes some of that is around more openness about what sort
of private conversations are being lawfully intercepted, and how few
conversations out of all conversations are lawfully intercepted.

I'm also reminded about when the list last touched - and then only very
briefly - on the powers open to very junior staff in the Department of Work
and Pensions, under the Social Security (Fraud) Act 2001 to obtain
communications data.  I cannot find it in the archive but no one on the list
seemed to pick up on it. 

Simon Watkin

   





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