Privacy at stake in UK cyber army plan
The British Army unveiled a plan on Saturday that it wants to create an army of social media warriors. The agenda appears to be engagement by the army in psychological operations “to influence the minds and form the behavior of the enemy and local populations”. Nevertheless, concerns are already rising in Britain that the plan would undermine the rights of the British public to privacy among many other things.
Reza Nadim, a London-based political commentator, told Press TV that the formation of cyber army in Britain to snoop on people may be an early indication that the country is moving toward becoming a police state.
“People have the rights to privacy and this (army’s surveillance on their social media activities) is taking it away from them,” Nadim said. “I think this country has been on that road of becoming a police state for a while now. And I think this is the start of the realization of that.”
He said serious doubts exist on whether such policies are ever effective, adding that concerns are already rising that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron is already wasting the British tax payers’ money on these and other similar fronts.
“It’s the Conservatives trying to push through some very draconian legislation and it will not help in what they are trying to do and it is a waste of money,” Nadim told Press TV’s UK Desk in an exclusive interview.
“I think if we do see it [army’s formation of social network warriors] happens, we are going to see this country go down a very dark road that it will not come back from.”
Nadim said such moves will help cause more radicalism instead of stopping it, emphasizing that the British government as well as other Western governments need to address the root causes of radicalism that lies in its foreign policy agenda.
“If you look at what most people are sharing on the internet, you can see that they are sharing the images of Israel killing Muslim children in Palestine, images of drone strikes. And that is the reality. That is not some extremism agenda,” he said.
“Extremism is what has committed by our government and by the American government in the supposed name of freedom and democracy.”
RSH/AA
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