This is one way we can all be better off through the government spending less. A very tasty set of ‘cuts’.

Personally I think that pre-charge detention should be limited to 7 days. If the police cannot find anything to charge you with inside a week then the have no business detaining you.

This is one way we can all be better off through the government spending less. A very tasty set of ‘cuts’.

That’s a good point, running an ‘endemic surveillance society’ (as described by privacy international) can’t be cheap.

Unfortunately the Lib Dems are guilty of projecting their own rationale onto others.

As evidenced by the tory response to the green incident, when the right talk about liberty, they mean their liberty or as I like to call it – the CCTV good, speed cameras bad, paradigm.

‘Personally I think that pre-charge detention should be limited to 7 days. If the cannot find anything to charge you with inside a week then the have no business detaining you.’

Any cop who can’t fit a suspect up in the first 48 hours should hand in his truncheon.

One of the reasons why the police say they need more time to detain people is because of the amount of evidence they have to sift through.

What’s interesting is that one of the companies that handles such data said the police could afford to be rather more selective about what they look for / at. I think it follows that if the police were more selective it would not only save their resources somewhat but pre-charge detention times could be decreased.

That’s a good point, running an ‘endemic surveillance society’ (as described by privacy international) can’t be cheap.

Well, quite: £12bn* for the Intercept Modernisation Programme, £5bn* for ID cards, £1bn* for eBorders, to name but three, and Gord knows what the exercises here (and their ilk) cost.

What’s the standard unit of measurement for what that money could buy us? A police officer? IMP alone would buy hundreds of thousands of police officers.

*Government guesstimates, so multiply by two or three at the least.