surveillance

Late on 2 December, the UK ministry of defence (MoD) issued a short online statement saying that the UK ‘will conduct surveillance flights over the eastern Mediterranean, including operating in air space over Israel and Gaza.’

The following day, health secretary Victoria Atkins, appearing as a government spokesperson on Sky News, was asked about the flights and said: ‘The ministry of defence has announced that it has sent some unmanned, and unarmed, surveillance drones into the region…

In June, a former CIA technical worker revealed US surveillance tactics, allowing the government access to phone records, individually stored data, and the servers of large social networking sites.

Whistle-blower Edward Snowden disclosed documents to WikiLeaks, calling the tactics of the US national security agency (NSA) ‘horrifying.’

Under the ‘Prism’ programme, which has been running since 2007, the NSA has access to the servers of Microsoft, YouTube, Skype, Facebook…