BRITAIN: Tinker Bell Lives

(2 of 2)

Others were less amused. Several angry M.P.s, including Dame Judith Hart, a former Labor Party Minister for Overseas Development, indignantly asked the government if they had been the victims of wiretaps. Though Thatcher formally denied that any legislator's phone had been tapped, Home Secretary William Whitelaw told Parliament that the government did resort to telephone tapping as an anticrime weapon.

For all the uproar, most Britons appear to accept the government's right to use electronic surveillance, provided it follows proper legal channels. The greatest public fear seems to be that the sheer size and capacity of the electronic facilities now available might lead to a sort of Parkinson's Law of eavesdropping: demand rises to meet supply. Warned Conservative M.P. Geoffrey Dickens: "It is so widespread it is frightening. We have to be terribly careful we are not moving toward George Orwell's 1984, especially as that year is not far away. "Click.