The more you oppress people, the more they'll rebel against it.

If the government keeps suppressing people in an effort to curb crime, more people will turn to crime. Most people turn to crime not because they like it or enjoy it, but because they have to. If you suppress/oppress people, more people will be forced into criminal behaviour.... especially if the government starts to restrict our rights to do things we can legally do now.

#1 what 3rd party are you referring too, the government?
#2 Why would the government have to read you emails anyway? If your not doing anything wrong then they shouldnt be reading your email right?

Under "innocent until proven guilty" you as a citizen are innocent of any crimes. Therefore, a 3rd party or law enforcement agency has no right to read your private emails. The only time they would is if you are under investigation for a crime. So if you think its ok for them to read your emails then you must be a suspect in a crime. What crime would that be? Why does a 3rd party have a right to read you private emails? Why does anyone else beside you and the recieving party have a right to read you emails?

It's just an example, you could replace reading emails with a whole bunch of other stuff.

And no, as it stands, they do NOT have a right. But as many of you pointed out, the can change the law all they friggin well like, which would then give them whatever rights they wanted.

Unless those laws are unpopular and costs the ruling parties votes. The current way to pass such laws without losing too many votes is yelling: "Terrorism!", every once in a while. I really don't understand how that can work in the UK, since the islamic terrorism isn't really scarier then the IRA, but Blair seems to be quite good at it.

I guess the IRA at least was white.

Anyway, as long as there are people yelling and screaming about the laws, and people fighting them, ignoring them, or otherwise not doing what the government wants, we're doing ok. It's passively going along with the laws that will cause harm further down the road.

That and remember to vote against the buffoons that made all this happen.

I guess its coz the IRA hasn't bombed us in a while but its only a year since islamic terrorism was upon us. People don't care what happened a few years ago, they only care about whats happening to them now.

Yes but how many stupid laws were passed in the IRA era?

yeah but thats government for you. I guess Iraq is far enough away (despite the fact they lived in Leeds...) for us not to bother getting so hysterical (though enough to join the war), whereas Ireland is only just over the sea. I dunno. I don't pretend to understand politics

I think you have it backwards.

He means, with "terrorism!" all these horrible laws that are destroying personal freedom were passed.

That doesn't seem to have happened to such a degree with the IRA.

I'm guessing it's because of the US. We didn't give a flying fuck about the IRA besides the occasional "omg that's horrible". Terrorism, though...we've formed a whole new federal task force.

whoops lol, i'll blame work for making me tired In that case it's probably because the IRA 'only' affected us (and of course Ireland) so though it was a big deal locally, it was fairly contained. Whereas since Iraq has affected both USA and UK (and probably other places), plus Blair is Bush's lapdog, then he's probably just following suit to try and look like a good guy.

Not that you didn't know it, but the IRA were terrorists to you know...they just didn't have beards and tans.

Anyway, a lot of people -especially American- seem to have a confusion that Iraq is somehow connected to the 'war on terror', it seems. The only terrorists in Iraq atm are the ones the US created by overthrowing the regime and the 'stability' it brought. Saddam, as any pragmatic dictator would, hated religious extremists and would have killed them before making deals with them. A lot of people forget that Iraq is/was one of the most secular arab countries in the entire middle east. That's not very straightforward if you're caught between Iran and S-Arabia, both clearly muslim regimes.

Point being: the war on terror is blah, and all the nice ideals that started it are just a cover. The government wins on two counts: it gets to pass all sorts of insane security laws (tapping regular americans, wtf?) at home and it diverts any criticism or attention from stuff, like the economy or how the rest of the world is growing more and more of a dislike for the US, to the "war at hand"..and if you're against it you're not a patriot and blabla.

And they're succesful in misleading the general public too. What sickens me the most is that there STILL aren't any WMD's and that nobody seems to fucking care. The whole world -Americans, Europeans, whoever- was lied to by the US adminstration and everyone is like "oh, well, we're here anyway." Meh. The US isn't any better than most of the dudes it's fighting in the middle east. I'd say they're less religious maniacs, but even that's hard to tell these days.