Do you care that you're under constant surveillance?

If you have nothing to hide then I don't see the problem? Surveillance is for security

Just a quick Q, once the laws are in place (if they aren't already) for evidence procured in this surveillance to be used in court, how can we be sure that it's genuine.
Presumably, with tons of phone conversations on storage, for example. It wouldn't be too hard to string some guilty sentances/confessions from the accused!

Part of the problem is - when did we vote for an erosion of the right to privacy? I'm pretty certain that neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems campaigned about more surveillance. In fact, when Labour was in power, both parties opposed the amount of surveillance we had. Now, as the Tories and the Lib Dems are in a coalition, people can say that their manifestos went out of the window, but the fact remains that people didn't agree to give up these rights.

There was heavy opposition to ID cards. There was heavy opposition to bills that called for more Internet surveillance. That tells me that people, in general, are not that comfortable with it, yet it turns out that the surveillance is there anyway.

The fact that the government wants all this control and all this information about the people it's supposed to represent makes me wary. It's easy to keep saying "it's all for your own good", "it's for greater security", and so on, but how much are people willing to give up for the idea of security? Surveillance cameras did not stop crime. No matter how the Internet, phones and so on are monitored, you're not going to stop every single nutter from setting off a bomb if he's determined to do so.

There can never be complete security. That's something people simply have to live with. In the meanwhile, I'd prefer to keep a decent amount of privacy. I feel I'm entitled to it, as I am not a criminal.

what are you actually giving up though if you think about it?

If a new CCTV camera gets put up does that affect how you go about your daily business? probably not.

If the government has the power to read your emails what are you actually giving up? nothing unless you're planning on organising crime over the internet.

people always say that we're being forced to give up stuff in the name of security but in reality we give up very little and what we receive in return outweighs what we give up by a considerable amount.

You're giving up your right to privacy and anonymity. No matter if you need it right now, or right then, there are always things you don't to be public knowledge or accessible by unknown parties if they so wish:

You're a closet homosexual. Private emails with close friends have you debating whether you should come out to your family. But with the rationalisation of your post, you might as well not even have "private" emails, and just debate it openly on Facebook.

What if you're having an affair? Do you want your spouse/partner to find out?

You run an online business selling things second hand from outlets. Your employers find out and fire you.

So yeah. Privacy is important to all of us when we need it.

i don't think the police are concerned with if you're a closet homosexual or having an affair. I suppose they could use the information to blackmail you but if they were prepared to break the law in such a way they would go one step further and just hack your emails anyway.

If the arguments in favour of no surveillance is "well you might want to have an affair one day" then im quite happy to have a little bit of privacy taken away.

Monitoring emails and so on is going to be used by the police as part of their investigations and i believe they have to get a warrant. They're not exactly going to publish a book saying "X gay, Y bought this for his bit on the side, Z has and STI".

Think of it like this, the police have the power to enter your home with a warrant to look for illegal activity not to judge your interior design, they are also not inviting the whole neighbourhood to come judge your colour schemes.

Not generally, no. But it isn't just the police watching you.

I'm not arguing in favour of no surveillance whatsoever. That would be impractical. I'm arguing in favour of retaining a basic human right.

Again, it's not just the police. And with the kind of all-pervasive surveillance we have, it's kind of inevitable that these kinds of things get dug up, whether being looked for or not.

i don't think the police are concerned with if you're a closet homosexual or having an affair.

Even if these things get dug up, would that be a problem? In the scenario that the OP gave, if someone was suspected of viewing child pornography but instead the police found some 'normal' pron (after obtaining a warrant and siezing the laptop [as they'd do now]), I'd think that the latter ('normal' porn) would have no relevance to the case and would be disregarded.
Similarly, I doubt that such things like orientation and fidelity would be of any interest to the surveillance agencies.

It requires putting an awful lot of trust in some very untrustworthy people. The potential for abuse here is huge, the whole thing is ripe for blackmail and corruption. Even if we do trust them not to be corrupt can we trust them not to lose our data? Maybe decide its fine to sell it all off like with our NHS records?

I have zero confidence that this mass surveillance is uniformly being used for anti-terrorist operations.

Yes and not just here in the UK - Snowden has demonstrated that the US is distributing our email amongst a wide range of agencies and corporations over there.

In the past, the NSA admitted that it had used the content of intercepted phone calls in Europe for commercial purposes, distributing 'economic intelligence' to US companies to give them a trading advantage. This is another area of huge concern.

I have zero confidence that this mass surveillance is uniformly being used for anti-terrorist operations.