New UK think tank will watch Big Brother

After four years at the Bar in London, barrister Alex Deane this week joins the team at the TaxPayers’ Alliance as director of a new TPA campaign group, a legal affairs think tank called Big Brother Watch.

Alex Deane, Conservative Party leader David Cameron’s first chief of staff, has an Australian connection. He worked for the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party on the last federal election campaign.

Mr Deane said, “Our focus will be on civil liberties and freedoms, the surveillance culture, and the steady encroachment of the state in our lives.”

TimesOnline ran a story about Big Brother Watch last week.

“Over the past 10 years our government has become increasingly overbearing, creating a nation of criminals out of good British citizens. We’re subject to ever more officious laws and intrusive means of surveillance,” the newspaper reported.

TimesOnline quoted the instance in June of an arthritis sufferer being handed a penalty notice for dropping … a £10 note.

In a move that will resonate in Australia, the newspaper also reported about documents leaked earlier this year that revealed “that GCHQ, the government’s spy centre, had already awarded £200m to suppliers as part of Mastering the Internet, a mass surveillance project designed to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain”.

Alexander Deane said there are many issues to be addressed and there is a “a big gap on the right side of the political aisle”.

It is a gap Big Brother Watch aims to fill.

Alex Deane will be supported by Dylan Sharpe, Boris Johnson’s press officer in the London mayoral campaign.

You can receive email updates about Big Brother Watch – visit the website.
Read the report at TimesOnline.