Sir – It was with a mixture of disbelief, anger and shame that I read (Report, November 17) that Oxford City Council plans to record all conversations in taxis licensed by the council.
Campaigners are, indeed, right to describe such a plan as ‘a staggering invasion of privacy that shows a total disregard for civil liberties’.
The Stasi in East Germany have become a byword for intrusive surveillance of private citizens, but it is difficult to imagine them operating in such an open and brazen fashion. At this time we are deploring the covert surveillance employed by some organs of the ‘tabloid press’. Surely we can identify a rotten scheme as not very different and absolutely insist: not in our city!
Philip Hensher, writing in The I, has identified the spread of evil, but by the desire to control: he describes the Oxford council as ‘babyish’. Please, no more silliness in one of Europe’s most distinguished cities.
Stuart McFarlane, Oxford
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