Today Ars Technica has a short report about a new law "that exempts GCHQ, police, and other intelligence officers from prosecution for hacking into computers and mobile phones." Effectively this makes (some of) the things that Edward Snowden made us aware of legal.

But why would the public accept this kind of thing to pass? Why didn't we hear about this earlier? How come this was not a hot topic for debate? That's the thing with this law: nobody was told it even existed until it was already in effect! As Ars Technica points out, this is legal. That is, the current (and past) laws in the UK allow for this kind of thing.

But secret laws are (another) way the UK government is rapidly deconstructing their image as a democratic group, i.e. a group that practices democratic procedures in the public interest. Apart from government, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, nobody could influence this legislation. So who is being represented here? For me, a government that does this kind of thing loses its legitimacy, full stop. And this becomes even more drastic seeing that this bit of news breaks just a week after the elections.

Think about this in the context of my short look at the right to resistance from Thursday: When have we used the available remedies? Well, for a law that atacks the individual's freedoms, is passed in secret, and held secret until in effect, there are very few in the first place..

With this kind of action the UK government makes it easy to pursue arguments that legitimize extremist actions by taking away most of, if not all, remedies that would be available through a proper democratic debate. If that was not their intention then they should revoke this law, enter it into the proper parliamentary process and pass it with a vote the public can see and judge them by. If it was their intention, then the UK would already be it's own version of 1984 that easily legitimizes any act against Big Brother.