The reality is that the French and British governments have discerned that a potent combination of public fear about extremism and political appetite for tough national security measures have cleared the path for draconian overreach and surveillance of all our communications. This is enacted even without proof that such tools will prevent the unpreventable, nor any cost-benefit analysis of all of the other ways that they leave us exposed, and society fragmented.

Truly a horrific manifestation of the tyranny of the masses. Mouth breathing dullards gobbling up every uttered turdthought by sophist politicians, parroted by uncritical propagandist newspapers, and actually believing and supporting these gross infringements of privacy. I guess this is why it's important to keep the population uneducated and docile. Chips and X-factor keep them in line.

The tools that France and Britain are currently seeking are too blunt and intrusive for modern democracies. They stifle dissent with the same chilling turn uttered by Robespierre, one of the main leaders of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution in condemning his former friend and close ally Danton to the guillotine for alleged counter-revolutionary activities: “anyone who trembles at this moment is guilty; for innocence never fears public surveillance”.

Except this isn't public surveillance. The public majority do not have access to this information. Logically it is private surveillance by the state. Asymmetry of information is powerful in business, war and any kind of interaction between two parties. The public should be trembling because right now the government has them right in it's crosshairs.