IT'S HERE, IT'S NOW: BIG BROTHER'S REIGN HAS BEGUN

Of all the weapons in the armoury of New Labour, there is nothing more
terrifying than Excalibur, the party's computer database. Tories speak of
it in hushed, broken tones, as the woad-painted tribes must once have
discussed the tortoise technique of the legions.

To all those who have suffered from its rapid rebuttal function, it has all
the mystique of the Maxim gun when first deployed against the wondering
Zulus. Until the 1997 election, nothing like it had been seen before. It
was fast. It could take on anything. It was lethal. It was to Excalibur
that Dan Corry, one of Stephen Byers's special advisers, sent his notorious
memo on May 23.

Hello there, he said, Stephen Byers's office here. Do you think you could
find out about these people from the Paddington Survivors' Group? I mean,
are they Tories? Immediately Excalibur's circuits began to whiz and pop;
its search engines scoured the capacious memory banks; with bony electronic
fingers it began to turn over every page in the super-colossal library of
its mind.

If there had been anything on the public record associating the Paddington
Survivors' Group with the Tory party, then Excalibur would have found it.
Bleep bleep bleep the mighty machine would have gone. I - HAVE - FOUND -
IT, Excalibur would have croaked to its Labour controllers; and the
necessary information would have been spat out. It would have been used by
Byers to smear Pam Warren and her fellow survivors. Be in no doubt about
that. "Oh, by the way," the spin doctors would have told journalists,
confidentially, off the record, "I thought you ought to know that these
Paddington rail victims are really just a bunch of Tory stooges."

Obliging elements of the media would have written as much, the legitimate
grievances of a badly injured woman would have been trivialised, and - who
knows? - Byers might have continued his astonishing limpet act for another
month. As it was, the Excalibur search failed. For all their efforts,
Labour couldn't find anything with which to smear Pam Warren, or her
successors, and it should apologise to her for even trying to do so. All I
ask you to imagine, if you want your flesh to crawl, is that the
information on Excalibur were not just confined to that which is already in
the public domain.

Anyone who loves liberty, and who wants to be protected from a nosy and
unscrupulous government, should be aware of the coming Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act. Seldom has a Bill been so grotesquely misnamed.
This will not regulate or control investigatory powers. It will oversee and
encourage an explosion in snooping, by official bodies, into our lives, our
associations, our interests, our every move. Investigatory powers are to be
given to virtually every public body and quango, from the police to the
local dog-catcher.

The Government originally said the Bill would be aimed at increasing the
power s of only the police, Customs, the intelligence services and the
Inland Revenue. That in itself is excessive. But under measures that have
still to be debated by MPs, seven Whitehall departments, every local
authority, health bodies, and 11 other bodies are included. It is a quite
stupefying extension of state power over the individual. Let us imagine
that Labour really wanted to do in poor Pam Warren, or you and me. Let us
suppose that we were saying or doing things that they didn't much like,
causing them embarrassment, making life difficult for Byers - that kind of
thing.

All they would need to find would be a convenient Labour-sympathising
person on one of these bodies, and he or she could snap his fingers and
conjure up a fantastic quantity of personal information about us. In order
to have access to details of all our personal phone calls and e-mails, it
would be enough to show that it was necessary for protecting public health,
or public safety, or mitigating any damage to anyone's health.

In fact, the Bill is drafted with such unbelievable woolliness that, for
the snoopers to avail themselves of this stuff, they could argue, among
several other possible grounds, that it was to "safeguard the country's
economic well-being". What if it was arbitrarily decided, by some
Labour-supporting council official, that what you or I were up to was
against the "economic well-being" of the country?

In that case, without consulting any judges, or securing any warrants, or
even obtaining the approval of the police, that official could demand - and
furtively pass on - the following information. They could establish what
websites you have visited, whom you have called on your mobile phone, who
has called you, and even the location of those calls.

What if you were a journalist, looking up Islamic websites on the net? Does
anyone have any right to draw conclusions from that? Suppose you find
yourself somehow trapped, as I once was, in a website called
"Boobtropolis", which blurts an embarrassing welcoming song. Does anyone,
apart from the indulgent readers of this newspaper, have a right to know that?

Suppose you are scanning the net for information about a disease from which
you suffer, or about the possibility of terminating a pregnancy? Why the
hell should that be a matter for anyone else? It is not just that the wrong
officials could get their hands on this stuff. It could fall into the hands
of the media. The possibilities for blackmail or abuse are limitless.

The measures are justified, as ever, in the name of the fight against
crime. Serious criminals will soon learn to avoid detection, perhaps by
leaving their mobiles running in other places, or by rediscovering the art
of letter-writing. This is an attempt to scarify the public, by letting
them know that they are being watched not only by Big Brother, but also by
all his nosy little relatives.

There is nothing between you and this Bill but one 90-minute debate next
week. Then it will be law. You have been warned.