Security, surveillance and deep sadness.

 I suppose that you, like me, keep a weather eye on what's going on around you, and have observed the breathless speed with which we are being ushered into a regulated, controlled form of existence, in which everything that's not mandated is forbidden. I am dismayed by what I see unfolding around us and I should think you must be too.

I can't remember the exact details to give you chapter and verse, but I presume you will have seen the latest news from the EU parliament — the EU chat control, giving access to our private messages. This allows them to scan all private messages, within the EU, but there are also treaties with the UK so it extends beyond Europe. It gives permission for all messages to be screened and checked by social media companies, and passed on to government bodies if they think it appropriate. The carefully chosen timing of the EU vote on this optimised the chances of it passing despite its unpopularity, so it is now through and en route to become law once the EU council signs it off. It is ostensibly about child protection, but is part of the rising wave of intrusive surveillance and control. 

It will apply to a variety of platforms and providers; I don't know where the extent of its reach ends. I understand it will affect Google (so, Gmail) and Facebook and WhatsApp. Some email and messaging providers like Proton and Signal are promising privacy protection. The picture is changing and developing rapidly, it's hard to keep up with, you'll need to make your own checks and verifications.

On my Facebook page and in my blog posts and in my email there is not now, and there never has been, anything sinister or predatory, anything corrupt or underhand, anything unkind or even verbally violent. Neither I, nor any of my circle of friends and contacts, is now or ever has been inflammatory or hateful or antagonistic or cruel towards children or adults of any race or ideological affiliation.

But.

In my Gmail, going back to when I started the account around 2010, I have an absolutely massive archive of communications. People — readers of my books, or people who have heard me preach or for whom I've conducted funerals — have come to me through this blog and via my publishers and from other sources, entering private correspondence with me about their woes and troubles, their marital and other relational difficulties, their bereavement and spiritual struggles, their aspirations and fears. They have sent me their contact details so we could correspond. There have been so many that without this archive I couldn't possibly keep track of them. Someone will write to me and say, "Hi, do you remember me? I wrote to you about my husband's illness two years ago." And because I keep an electronic archive I can quickly and easily refresh my memory and pick up the conversation again.

And in the course of time, some of them have died. For instance, there was a reader of my Hawk and Dove books who over time became a friend. The last emails I had from her were first a hasty message to say she had been diagnosed with widespread cancer and she had rushed to Amazon to buy all the Hawk and Dove series so she'd have it to read in the hospital, and then second to thank me because I sent her (she was an avid crafter) a parcel of stationery crafting bits to enjoy while she was in the hospital, and then a final email from her mother to say she'd been transferred to hospice care; and then radio silence.

She was just one. I have the emails from so many friends who died, talking about their faith and their pain in terminal illness, courage shining through, and dauntless hope.

I have trans friends, gay friends, talking about their faith journey in a church context not always kind.

These people have shared the depths of their souls with me.

Regardless of how well-intentioned one might imagine the government and the moderators of social media platforms to be, this much I know: it's like Pandora's box. Once you open the lid anything can come out. Personal details can be most useful on the dark web, and can be scoured to train AI — can be used for any purpose whatever. There is no conceivable circumstance in which I would expose such sensitive correspondence from people who have trusted me to public scrutiny.

And you know what that means? I will have to go through the whole lot, thousands upon thousands of such emails, and permanently delete them. I started reading through, but after several days had to accept that there are just too many. I'm just going to have to delete them en bloc. 

I cannot tell you what a grief this is to me, what a sorrow — because it's a memory bank, it's like an external hard-drive for my heart.

Once I've done this, if you have written to me about your family and your struggles, the abuse you have suffered, the heartbreaks, I won't remember; there have been too may such communications to hold them in my mind. I am so, so sorry. It means that now if you write and say, "You know what I told you about my grandson?" — well no, I won't. Because I won't be able to go back and check.

And there have been too many correspondents for me to download all the contact details and summaries of their circumstances. I couldn't track it as effectively as I could in email, and it's too big a task for me.

I have no words for how much this upsets me, or for what I think of the enormity of the political classes that in these days have our lives in their grip. 

But I just wanted to tell you, for two reasons — one because I may now no longer remember your contact details and the life circumstances you have described to me, which breaks my heart; and two because I want you to know that never, never will I permit the trust and confidence you have placed in me be betrayed in such a way. 

There is a poem called Conscientious Objector by Edna St Vincent Millay, which I believe to be in the public domain, so I can give the text of it here. It expresses how I feel at the moment.

I shall die, but 
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; 
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself: 
I will not give him a leg up. 

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where 
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll. 

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends 
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much, 
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me shall you be overcome.

Please continue to write to me, freely, as you always, have, knowing that I will delete your correspondence as soon as I've read it, or else I will save such communications offline where they cannot be read.