When reading about government proposals to peer ever more deeply into the lives of their citizens, I suggest that you apply a variation of Rawls‘ original position to decide whether any given measure will be for the better, or for the worse. The question is this:
If you did not know whether the government proposing this measure was a benign liberal democracy or a malign totalitarian dictatorship, then would you want this measure to be implemented?
All is well when cuddly-wuddly New New Labour proposes these measures, and people nod and hum and let it slide. If it was the Burmese military regime, I wouldn’t be so bloody sanguine about it, would you?1 The question to ask is not whether your government is benign or malign, but whether this is the sort of information that you think the government should have in the first place.
- Perhaps you would. [↩]