Civil liberties can't stand up to bureaucracy!

LONDON, England - April 2, 2012 - It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking six. David Davis, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of the BBC's Millbank studio, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

I kid. But you could forgive Mr. Davis for running through the opening lines of George Orwell's 1984 as he prepared to go on the Today program this morning.

The government's plan to bring in new monitoring of emails, mobile phone and social media seems, from the outside, to fit the definition of the word Orwellian rather well.

Under the new proposals, security officials will be able to look at who is talking to whom at any time (though not, apparently, what they are saying), which means that all of my emails to that Nigerian prince over the £1 million in blood diamonds he owes me will suddenly be open to scrutiny.

So despite all that bluster about protecting civil liberties when the Coalition came to power, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are just going to go and reintroduce Labour's 2006 scheme anyway. Despite the fact that both parties opposed its introduction when they were in Opposition.

Now, it could be that this is evidence of the evil intentions of control-freak ministers who want to watch everything. But David Davis actually had the most compelling explanation earlier: as he put it, this is the result of Whitehall 'securicrats' apparently, who think that this "needs to be done because it can be done".

He's right. This is a problem that is definitely not limited to restrictions on our civil liberties. Rather, Whitehall is full of well-meaning bright young civil servants. They all have bold ideas and they want them implemented. They see problems and find solutions. They keep pushing new ideas to ministers, who are too overworked to realize exactly what they're agreeing to half of the time.

You can tell that the Home Office ministers responsible don't really care about this revived Labour policy, because it has only been defended by anonymous officials. When ministers want to introduce something, they announce it on the Today Programme themselves. I expect given the backlash, this idea might be quietly forgotten about, as ministers stamp on it.

But it will be back, because government will always seek out new powers to control our lives for the greater good. As Oscar Wilde wrote, "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."