A quiet revolution?

Whilst the mainstream media and excitable young people are opining that the dawn of National Socialism is nigh, our authoritarian state apparatus is being built quietly behind the scenes.

The government has outsourced parts of the contract relating to the mass surveillance project blandly named the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP) to Hewlett Packard (HP) formerly known as EDS, see here.

If, like me, you responded to the consultation, quaintly called: Protecting the public in a changing communications environment, then I'm sure you knew that doing so was simply an ironic criticism of the PR exercise. The government has not published the response to the consultation yet HP contractors are busily helping GCHQ build systems to allow data mining of every communication online.

Evidently the relationship with GCHQ is considered so sensitive within HP - that it is referred to as: "a client in the West Country." The work in Cheltenham to crunch the data is being carried out under a secret project called Mastering the Internet.

EDS has been involved in such IT disasters as - The Child Support Agency. So, if I were you I'd avoid e-mailing comments such as: 'the party bombed ' from now on.