I spotted this on my Facebook feed today, from an old University friend, who now works as a Senior Cyber Security Consultant:

“I will shortly be writing to my MP urging him to push the Cabinet to extend it’s Investigatory Powers Bill to mandate that all mail carriers must open all letters they collect, scan their contents, and store those images in an archive for a given period in case law enforcement agencies needed to review their contents. Furthermore, I think it would be reasonable outlaw glue on envelopes altogether…with a recommendation to allow postcards only.

I urge the rest of the UK to do the same as a matter of priority due to concerns around National Security.”

He always had a wicked sense of humour but for those who think this is just banter, it really is the postal mail equivalent of what the UK Government is proposing for email in the Investigatory Powers Bill (nicknamed “The Snooper’s Charter”). The staggering thing is that the UK public is largely unaware – generally engagement with politics here is low and I’d wager that the combination of politics and technology has a particularly high “snooze factor”.

[Perhaps Parliament needs to be transformed to involve some kind of “bake-off” type element with MPs getting voted out each week based on their performance. The Westminster Factor. Britain’s Got Legal Talent. Would that get the public involved?]

Putting aside low social engagement in politics (or anything that’s not a big competition on TV) this quote highlights how out of touch our legislators are with the realities of digital life – and how ridiculous the new law would be if applied to analogue communications…