ISIS - Hitler Speaks

As it comes clear that around 30 British holidaymakers were murdered, and many more wounded, on a Tunisian beach by a gunman claiming allegiance to ISIS, or whatever they’re calling themselves this week, the outrage of the punditerati follows, with the inevitability of night following day. Something Must Be Done, readers are told, and not just that, Someone Must Be To Blame For It All.

There have been a variety of ranting and frothing talking heads on display, and while the response from the likes of Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips shows her peddling the same one-trick pony as always - claiming that Islam is not a religion of peace and is some kind of monolithic enemy, a similar tale to the one we used to be given on Communism - there are some who have at least attempted originality.

Head and shoulders above the rest, in that he has attempted to be original but failed spectacularly, is Max “Hitler” Hastings, who has been wheeled out by the Mail to tell readers that it’s all the fault of Edward Snowden, the deeply subversive Guardian, and all those bleeding heart liberal do-gooders who don’t appreciate the positive virtues of having the spooks snooping on our phone calls and emails.

Just how wibbling is “Hitler”? Feast your eyes on this gem: “It is scarcely surprising that the intelligence services are uneasy about the proposal in the report to government this month by David Anderson QC, that members of the judiciary should exercise powers of independent supervision over SIS, MI5 and GCHQ … A rogue judge granted such licence could delight the Guardian newspaper by adopting a tough line towards government surveillance, but do untold harm to our safety”.

Gosh, a judge might not do what the Daily Mail says he or she should! There’s more: “The West is fortunate enough to possess extraordinary technology for electronic surveillance [but] Their task has been made more difficult by the revelations from Moscow of the American traitor Edward Snowden, who has alerted the world’s terrorists to their vulnerability to eavesdropping”. Like buggery he has. But do go on.

“The internet lies at the heart of much, if not most modern terrorist activity, yet such service providers as Google have become increasingly unwilling to give intelligence agencies, and explicitly British ones, information about their users … With reckless disregard for any civic responsibility, they offer customers apps which enable them to encrypt their communications”. See, it’s Google’s fault too!

Hastings falls into the trap that ISIS have set for him: too many Governments respond to an attack on privacy, and civil liberties, by deciding that Something Must Be Done - and taking that privacy, and those liberties, away, thus doing the terrorists’ dirty work for them. Turning the UK into even more of a surveillance state will solve nothing.

Fortunately, our security is not in the hands of Daily Mail pundits.