Privacy Issues

In England there is a scandal. The privacy rights of some individuals was intruded upon. In a culture where it seems that the news is all but overtaken by personal issues it is refreshing to learn that individuals actually have rights to privacy.

There are differences of course but living in the US I am entertained by the concern over this privacy intrusion in the UK. I have lived in a culture where phone-tapping in the name of national security was defended strongly in recent history.

Andy Coulson may very well have to step down as the Conservative Party's director of communications on the head of this. I wonder if we were still in the BUSH-2 era would this scandal be a scandal at all. In fact, I wonder if this invasion of privacy policy at the News of the world and other newspapers was a "spin-off" of the culture of phone-tapping and privacy intrusions of the Bush-2 leadership. Remember that the Bush-2 era was very well supported by the Blair leadership (at least publicly).

And now, years later, Coulson's closet is opening up and haunting him. He left the newspaper business and probably felt he was free. Did he realize that this would resurface? Does he now regret his alleged actions? Will he admit to any of these allegations? Is he guilty?

Or will he claim forever that he left because he couldn't live with the phone-tapping ideology that was the climate of his newspaper while he was editor? Will he hide behind others and claim innocence? Will he send others to the guillotine in his place? Will he ride off into the sunset saying that he knew nothing for most of the time and when he did learn of the policy that he resigned his post?

And how will Rupert Murdoch deal with all this? Now we might be in for some entertaining publishing by the Guardian. And while it is entertaining it might actually be an example of good journalism.

Now why did it take so long for it to come out?

Added on July 10th, 2009: The Bush story keeps trickling out.