The Powers That Bcc

What a hoo-ha about bugger all. ‘Surveillance Dave’ going back on his pre-election verbiage about civil liberties, according to that horrible combination of the opportunistic Left and the mad Right. As ever, the facts…

You will recall that Mr Cragsbury is a civil libertarian, so I am prepared for the odd crim to go free rather than impose serious curtailment to the rights of all. Some of my history on this issue is here, here, here, here and here. The state should never be given carte blanche or too much power. Hence, I was very against NuLab’s mad previous proposals for the Government to bug our email traffic at will and hold the data themselves. The current proposals are in fact very different.

For many many years, the Government has been allowed to listen to our telephone calls. They do this by requiring the telcom industry to hold data on when, where and from/to whom all our calls are made for a period of time, so that if they believe we are baddies doing bad things, they can check this info and then using that go (secretly) to court to get a legal order empowering them to then bug our calls. Very, very few of these legal orders are granted. Very, very few of us are ever bugged. This process is for suspected serious crims, terrorists, foreign intelligence agents etc. You and I need worry not.

Anyhoo, the volume of calls over the internet is exploding. And right now, the security services have very limited ways to investigate this, for example Islamic extremists in the UK on Skype chatting to their masters in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan etc.

Thus, all the Government wants to do is extend their existing powers on telephone calls to internet activity and most especially internet calls. Not an issue than we good people need worry about much but of course a wonderful hobby horse for the Dark Lord Dacre and all his malign minions to rant about in The Daily Hate, and perfect fodder for all good bandwagon hunting Lefties who want scare mongering and negative coverage of the Coalition.

Gotcha

As regulars will know, I am implacably opposed to ID cards. Here's my reasoning. But this is a good day for freedom, democracy and privacy. Testament to how out of control Gordy's inept Government is, can be found in this wonderful story.

Today Chris Grayling, the Tory Shadow Home Secretary, has changed our national policy on ID cards by effectively pulling the rug from underneath the Government's scheme, rendering it incapable of coming into existence. By writing to the five bidders for the contract, telling them clearly that whatever is agreed this side on the General Election will be ripped up straight after it. These bids cost millions, and what company is going to engage in the bidding process when the overwhelming likelihood is that it will be scrapped almost immediately.

Democratic Freedom

Two stories have caught my eye today.

First, the ongoing saga about the racist bigot Nick Griffin attending a Buckingham Palace garden party and, second, the news that the police have constructed a national network of cameras and computers which automatically log car number plates and which will be in place within months.

What links the two, you ask?

Let's deal with the police first. This constant demand for more surveillance is seductive but wrong. Seductive because every policeman, lawyer and Nulab politician can recite facts and examples as to how many more crimes they could solve if we could just watch people more. Wrong because we have tipped over the balance of what is reasonable interference in our day-to-day lives by the forces of the state.

As I blogged a few days ago in relation to euthanasia, we must always make laws for the 99% not the 1%. I am sure we could catch just about all criminals if we took DNA samples of the entire population and watched everyone all the time, but that is clearly unacceptable. And so is establishing a national network to spy on the perfectly legal 99% of us. This could only happen in illiberal Nulab Britain, where democratic freedom is expendable.

Now, should BNP politicians be allowed to take tea at the Palace? Simple answer: yes. I hate the BNP and their racist, thuggish bigotry. But we live in the cradle of democracy. And democracy can sometimes be uncomfortable because those people with abhorrent views are allowed to express them. And, despite the fact that I hate them, I would fight for their right for them to hold and express those horrible views. It's called democracy and liberal fascists like Nulab just don't get it.

Democracy is a fragile thing, one that the current Nulab Government has been doing its best to destroy for some time. Take democracy for granted at your peril. As we can see, it can be easily be eroded.

Chip and Pinning Your ID Away

Chip and Pin likely to be inbound for ID cards we are told today.

For eight years of my life I carried an ID card. It was a forces ID card and incredibly useful. I could instantly prove my identity, long before photo ID driving licences existed which now do that job admirably.

So I joined the debate about ID cards pretty much in favour, absolutely seeing the arguments that (a) it would help crack down on benefit fraud which costs the taxpayer billions each year and (b) that law abiding people have nothing to fear and much to gain. Frankly, I needed to be convinced that it would have any positive impact on terrorism.

I am now adamantly opposed to ID cards. Why? Principally for three reasons.

Mission Creep

First, any Government scheme or law change ends up ‘mission creeping’ itself to an illiberal end, proving what used to be called the ‘thin end of the wedge’ argument. A case in point:

Then - In 2000, NuLab told us the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was needed to tackle terrorism in the UK.

Now - In 2009, local councils have used this piece of anti-terrorism legislation an average of 25,000 in the last five years to in fact chase dog foulers, parents manipulating school catchment boundaries, people putting out rubbish incorrectly etc...

Now - NuLab tell us we need ID cards to combat terrorism.

Future - What do you think will happen once NuLab mission creep sets in? Minor transgressors of local bylaws will be targeted by overzealous officialdom for totally pathetic offences?

Government incompetence

Second, the constant stream of stories that tumble out of Government about data security, or lack of it: flash sticks lost on trains, laptops stolen, external consultants losing discs, info going astray in the post. It just goes on and on. These highlight Government’s arrogant and lazy attitude to personal data. With all the hoo-ha that each story brings, we see no real attempt by Government to stop this chaos.

I just no longer think Government can be trusted to hold personal data and the idea of giving them my total identity in the future (photo, finger print, retina scan etc) as well as potentially making ID cards ‘smart cards’ that can store health records, cash, chip and pin et al fills me with dread.

Terrorism

It seems that no serious anti-crime organisation, apart from Jacqui Smith’s Home Office, has produced a single weighty argument that ID cards will actually have any measurable affect on terrorism. Thus, the main justification used by the Government simply holds no water.

Join the campaign: http://www.no2id.net/

A Week in Surveillance Britain

I thought it might be interesting to see what a week in the life of 'surveillance Britian' was like. This last seven days, the following occurred:

1. Google Street View was launched last week. Why do we need this? How come Google has the right to take pictures of my home and put them on the internet? (But of course not Number 10). Google has been forced to pull down some images before the week is even out...

2. Dodgy databases abound in Government, according to The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which reports that one in four major government databases is "almost certainly illegal" under human rights or data protection legislation, with 11 of 46 systems being utterly dodgy and a further 29 looking pretty shaky too. You can read the full report here.

3. Social networking sites are to be monitored by the Government. Why should the law abiding 99% have their privacy rights taken by the state in tackling the law breaking 1%?

4. On average, councils have used terror legislation 25,000 in the last five years to snoop on their local residents, but for minor issues like dog-fouling, parking offences etc...

And that's just the last week.

How did we get here? How easily has society slept whilst our fundamenatal rights have been unceasingly eroded? What was Liberty and its the attention seeking Shami Chakrabarti doing whilst all this occurred?

Update: Thanks to Lib Dem Voice, here is how to get yourself removed from Google Street View.

Big Brother

We live in a country where:

We are monitored by 4 million CCTV cameras, an ever increasing number, making us the most watched nation in the world. There is one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK. If you live in London you are likely to be on cameras 300 times a day. According to a 2004 European Commission report, Britain has the highest density of CCTV cameras in Europe. It found then that 40,000 cameras monitored public areas in 500 British towns and cities, compared to fewer than 100 cameras in 15 German cities and no open street CCTV at all in Denmark. In the past decade the Home Office has spent 78% of its crime prevention budget on CCTV, before assessing its effectiveness in deterring or detecting crime.

We have the largest police DNA database in the world, according to a recent House of Lords report, with more than 7% of the population having their samples stored already, whether they have committed a crime or not. This compares with 0.5% in the US. It took a normal, everyday bloke who had committed no crime to take a case right up to the European Court to even get the Government to look at reviewing this.

There are 1,000 surveillance requests every day by ‘state’ organisations.

5,000 schools now fingerprint their pupils for registration, using the library or buying school meals etc.

Your NHS records do not belong to you, they are NHS property. You may not have them, even if you ask really nicely.

Countless organisations hold electronic information on you: your local council, HMRC, your bank, insurance companies, fuck me even Tesco with it’s ClubCard.

Local authorities use terrorism legislation to check whether you are sending your children to the right school, or who is putting their dustbins out on the wrong day, or who is dog fouling the local streets. Councils want to introduce computer chipping of rubbish bins.

By law, ISPs have to retain your email messages for one year. The police have access to mobile phone tracking information. Our Labour Government wants to expand forced retention of mobile phone calls and email messages.

From last month, if you are flying to the USA, you must submit your personal information three days in advance so that the US authorities can check you out.

And Labour desperately wants to introduce ID cards.

A little while ago, and I forget the exact numbers or the exact reference, David Dimbleby on BBC Question Time stated that before Labour came to power only a handful (4-6) organisations could ‘surveil’ you, now over 700 can, including every local authority in the country.

There is always a logical argument for the state to want more data on its citizens, to more efficiently cut crime, to target the evil, to stop tax dodgers etc. Freedom is always inconvenient for the forces of the state. Freedom is often inefficient.

But ‘freedom’ is a fragile thing, usually hard fought for and always given away at your peril.

We have allowed our freedom to be eroded by stealth. (Liberty has frankly been asleep on the job). We have reached the moment where we need to pull back.

I am a law abiding citizen who happily used to carry an armed forces ID card, but I am implacably opposed to the national ID card scheme.

A General Rant

Been bad at posting this week. Will do better next week. Anyway, a general rant for today:

Snow - Get over it. It's just a bit of snow. To listen to that total tosser Nigel Faggot of the Monster Raving UKIP Party on Question Time this week, you would think that the Government had started another illegal war or something. Every few winters we will get a snowy period. Schools may have to shut, roads may be a bit tricky....but so what? Why is the British response to any issue to automatically look for someone to blame and expect everything to be perfect every day of every year. Grow up.

Surveillance society - So yet again, it is pointed out to Government (today by a House of Lords committee) that we are the most surveiled society in the world. We need to get rid of that bloody police DNA database for those not convicted, stop the proliferation of cameras everywhere, actually audit the numbers and reduce them and we need a privacy law.

Speed cameras - 2 million speed camera offences in 2006. That tells me that (a) we have too many cameras, (b) the British public do not respect their use by the state and (c) our speed limits are set at the wrong level.

Measles - 36% rise in measles last year. Ha! Sorry spotty kids but your parents are assholes. Follow clear medical advice rather than wet, lefty, trendy opinions based on spurious research from a rogue doctor. Although the silver lining here is that this rise is particularly prevalent in North London. Spotty New Labour. Love it.

Blair and Obama - Funny how St Obama of America did not want a photo op with Gordy. Wonder why?