And when I woke up I was sure that I was Winston Smith, cowered in the alcove to avoid the telescreen. You see, the government have decided that, if anything, the plan to record every phonecall, e-mail and text message didn't go far enough, and they needed to snoop in on Facebook, myspace and bebo, so the have a list of everyone's friends, blogs, sexual and religious orientation, wall posts and messages.

This is, of course, to fight the ever growing threat of a terrorist attack.

But what exactly do they think terrorists do? Log on to twitter an say "Praise my distorted and twisted understanding if Allah, for I go now to blow up a pub, the Wetherspoons on the corner of high street and warwick avenue, in Stoke. I shall be entering paradise wearing my green knee length coat, a blue hat and sunglasses, at exactly 16.03 tomorrow.." ?? because I don't think that fits in the characture count.

The notion that with tens of thousands of encryption methods, secure messaging sites and secure phone lines, people log onto facebook to become friends with bin laden is so retarded I expected even the government to know better. You can read more at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/now-big-brother-targets-facebook-1653407.html or, if you think the indy is too liberal, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7962631.stm But still, it's not like the government ever loose any data they have, right?

I quote: ''; Home Office spokesman said it would consult shortly "to ensure that we keep up with technological advances''''

But one must counter, then, that surely there was no big database recording every letter ever sent from one address to another? Surely the pub landlords were not required to fill in forms detailing who met together for a pint of ale back in the 60s? What they are doing is blatant scaremongering, fear-baiting, and invading privacy on a level never before seen or heard outside China (or maybe Russia).

There is no feasible way this can combat terrorism any more than the time they made postmen catalogue all the letters in Northern Ireland to see who was a ... oh, hang on a minute, I've just remembered that they never did that because it would achieve nothing. This is a shambolic attempt by the incompetent government to drum up fear, to invade your privacy and start the most expensive snooping program in the Western World. Oh, did I mention that the home office is training 60,000 members of the public to report when they see suspicious people? http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/23/jacqui-smith-terrorism-civilian-force

Yeah, this sounds about right for a government whose leader is travelling round the world advocating spending money when his bank manager says he can't afford to, whose 10 years of financial mis-management has led us into this recession and who still don't understand that spending money we don't have isn't a solution to anything exept destroying peoples lives. You want to monitor something, you can monitor this.

So, I advocate to you all, readers of the internet, you may want to check out safe-mail.net, and you might want to think about pulling the plug on facebook if this bill gets through. I know I will be.

I'll take the threat of a few people who think God wants them to blow themselves up over a government who think they are God.