British authorities used anti-terrorism powers to detain David Miranda for nine hours as he passed through Heathrow airport (Picture: Reuters)

How can you respect any government that has absolutely no concept of a free press? Making journalists smash hard drives, intimidating their partners – the acts of tin-pot dictators, not one of the world’s oldest democracies.

For what is democracy without freedom of speech? Without the power to question our masters, it is nothing but undemocratic.

Contrary to the naive arguments of the nothing-to-hide, nothing-to-fear brigade, our government mines paranoia. It steals, sifts, sieves, sorts, and collects information to create mega-data-warehouses – that can catalogue and examine almost every piece of data we create.

Then, utilising almost unimaginably powerful computers, computing almost incomputable algorithms finds relationships that may, or may not exist – all without permission, oversight and appeal.




So thank you for bringing it to our attention, as far as I’m concerned Edward Snowden is a hero of the highest order. If ever there was a public interest defence, that was it. And you know where politicians can stick woolly weasel words like ‘could be of help to terrorists’ and ‘interests of national security’.

I do like to see such people squirm. From the way they are wriggling, it’s clear the string-pullers at No.10 and the White House are finding the spill from Snowden’s spotlight somewhat discomforting. I bet it’s a lot worse for those who prefer to hide in the shadows. NSA, and GCHQ, NTAC, acronyms for spooks and shadow servants we know, and those we don’t, people who don’t like being illuminated now writhe like Bela Lugosi’s Frankinstein caught in the morning rays.

Perhaps, we should be glad they are not playing poker, in their hand a busted flush, and boy do we know it, they are hardly concealing their discomfort. Things so far have clearly spooked the photophobics in Cyprus, Cheltenham, Bude and Bluffdale; alarmingly, they seem more terrified of what’s to come.

GCHQ’s Cheltenham HQ, are they happy in the shadows? (Picture: Reuters)

They’re pathetic – making one journalist take an angle-grinder to his Macbook. Or locking another’s partner up for nine hours under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.

So stop throwing your weight around before those bully boy theatrics blow up in your face. Whatever your masters command next, it might just make Snowden pull the dead man’s switch out of spite.

It’s too late for kicking in doors, so put the Jackboots away, you’ve missed the boat for such symbolic footwear, and unless you are prepared to tear up our unwritten constitution, you’ve already enough rope.

Snowden is holding all the aces, so that raises the question – given the cat is already out the bag, what other beast lurks at the bottom?

What, yet to be revealed, has the spooks in such a panic? We don’t know. But we know this, ‘the lady doth protest too much’ and that probably means it’s something so repellent, so shocking, and so potentially destabilising, both the British and American governments are petrified of it getting out.