DRIP, the British Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, was rushed through parliament as an ‘emergency’ measure last month, just before the Commons disbanded for the summer. A constitutional outrage against what remains of the UK’s democracy, the method is drearily familiar. Here is Brian Eno in 2009 reflecting on the method and danger of DRIP's implementation five years ago, in a very short black and white medley made for the Convention on Modern Liberty.
As Eno says, "One of the ways in which civil liberties become curtailed is that governments introduce legislation theoretically to deal with emergency situations and then they suddenly start using it for all sorts of different things, so that a law that is meant to really deal with an extreme and dangerous situation is suddenly used to mop up any inconvenient activity at all."
