Evening Plenary

Billy Bragg was surprised to find himself agreeing with David Davis, but want to talk about the role of the artist “in this struggle. The issue we have and why we don’t have a document that starts we the people is because our revolution was 100 years to early. As we have no framework it is difficult, David Davis had problems protecting our rights because of it. It doesn’t really matter if it is called a British bill of rights as long as it is fair to all.

Lisa Appignanesi says she noticed a lot of talking about silence in the context of people not wanting to talk about things. She is revisiting Dominic Grieve’s point about repealing of laws. She would like the parties to say what they would repeal. 1st on her list are the anti terror laws, she talks about kids being arrested protesting, people being arrested reading at the cenotaph and then she moves on to a topic mentioned in my stream in which she finds laws to be abhorrent, “seditious” libel and criminal defamation. Penultimatly she wants to deal with what she refers to as concentration camps for asylum seekers. Lastly she supports the human rights act and isn’t sure why the media is so down on it.

Feargal Sharkey is here to talk about the oppression of music in the UK under the licensing act and other regulations especially in the Metropolitan area rather than here to do his normal trick of asking for extension of copyright. Tells a very funny story about belly dancing to lead in to a discussion of form 696. Apparently only 21 London councils have included the wording that enables this to be a licensing issue. He is reading from the form the implied threats if you don’t fill it in correctly.

Paul Gilroy wants to ensure that all of this is done in an intelligent and sensible manner, and brought what had been absent (from what I had seen) apart from Chuka Umunna all day which was the perspective that us white guys havn’t had it as bad as other people and provided a good bit of context about the UK and the rest of the world.

Cory Doctorow has been called a geek for twittering from the platform then he suggest that the US didn’t spot 9/11 because it collected too much info. Taking photos of public buildings can’t be considered a security issue as we all know what they look like. All of this would be less painful if the government delivered what it promised. I think that is a big disconnect  from a lot of people here who don’t want to give this information up even if it did the things the government suggests it should (Cory FFS slow down!).

Sorry this is patchy had wifi and power and helping out people with wikipedia lookups during the talks, huge apologies to the panel especially Paul :-(

How do we secure modern liberty

Afua Hirsch, starts by saying that she thinks it is far harder to do this than the day job(s), as a lawyer she challenges misuses of rights as journalist she highlights these abuses to the world, but  this saying what is the way forward. She also (relevantly) talks about the hairdressers and how the people there feel a disconnect with politics. Why aren’t rights part of education why don’t children get taught how they should be treated by society (and also how they should treat other people to not infringe their rights).

Chuka Umunna agrees that part of what needs to happen is making rights mainstream, it should be part of the bread and butter of the countries daily life. He is relating a very personal tale about liberties being infringed and wondering how to widen this to relate it to people who haven’t yet experienced these problems themselves. Discussing the real on the ground experience of CCTV and DNA databases in the the constituency that he is the PPC for. He is suggesting that we need to ensure that the whole picture of government and corporate incursion is considered, so that spam, direct mail and other big brother business concepts are considered alongside database government not 100% convinced about the snail spam threat. This is a PPC who says he wants it to be an election issue.

“A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested by the police” is Chris Huhne’s opening quote as he goes on to talk about the constituent members of what he calls the parliamentary liberal party with a deliberate small L linking LibDems 50 or so Labour MPs who voted against 90 days and by his estimation of half the conservative party who are also liberal in view. Strangely he is also pimping his new Freedom Bill ;-) Next why are Human rights more important than a bill of British rights? Because what if a future authoritarian government starts declaring people non persons then they are no longer protected, second instance of the conference ending abruptly due to Godwin's Law, Shami fell fowl earlier as well. The next way forward is to re-strengthen parliament keeping the government to account the separation of executive and legislative is so important.

Will Hutton has asked the question on what basis we put this to put across and has landed on the totally British point of making it ‘Fair Play’ and has folled this back to Chuka’s point about business, they are never going to behave better than the government and as the current government is not setting a moral bar they have nothing to live up to. The Audience is divided on comments about different cultures and how they see “public space” mainly because one of the contrast cultures was Islam.

Brian Eno puts down his Mac and hush descends, what is different about humans, imagination, this is because we practice it, we do this through arts and science. He now posits that our vision of people has changed we don’t see “the enemy” as we did in the world wars, we have empathy to their suffering no matter who or what they are and what the political machines are doing. The problem is that the though of imagination and empathy seems to be finite and as we have more feeling we have less vision of the future and aren’t seeing the coming problem as they dismantle the ramshackle edifice that is our civil liberties. Next is parallels with how much effort we need to put in to get climate change sorted how everyone should learn from the youth using facebook etc to organise etc to thwart control. In response to the earlier comments, he also supports the idea that education should immerse young people in liberty.

You should definitely watch the video, Eno is more expressive than I am.

Questions: Who would we trust in writing a constitution and what role could the convention play?

Chuka suggest web2.0 techniques to help write a new constitution, I think Chuka Umunna has just suggested crowdsourcing writing a British constitution. Looks like Will Hutton is backing him up. This would become a true Constitutional Convention.

Question about civil disobedience and asking if the “establishment” are as committed. Oh it wasn’t really a question.

Question about children being taking children from parents, Chris H responding, has moved back to the previous non question and suggesting that parliament is too stable.

Very important point from Evan Harris that all these rights belong to all, no matter what we think about them or what they have to say. Very big round of applause. All these freedoms need to fully free for all.

Eno has suggested a honoured group that should draft the constitution, Chris H cites two provinces in Canada that have done it with random people.

Who Rules: is there a Media-political class?

Liz Forgan starts of with the Lloyd-George Scott relationship and how it affected both information flow and impartiality. Should politicians fear the press, yes they should see them as an external consciences, the blogosphere is always kicking at any existing M-P class as it gets analysed and spat at from the internet, and that is keeping the media on the strait and narrow. Again discussing the fact that there needs to be a paid for media to pay for the day to day research and legal backup, references the Guardian tax avoidance pieces. Discussions about the Scott trust and how it supposedly works to safeguard liberal media to report on the erosions of liberty.

Peter Oborne is going to argue the thesis that not only does the M-P class exists and is a threat via international football. Sorry no Peter was apparently the wrong Crouch. The suggestion is that the current set of politicians are a clique amongst themselves and the supposedly opposition positions are all about maintaining the status quo of keeping the leadership in power. There is a term for this, it is a cartel. This manifests itself as a hatred of the institutions that could challenge them. He has just been wound up, in several ways.

Simon Jenkins starts with Norway and an exercise to see what the country would be like after a hundred years that was carried out at the millennium. The academics decided that the future was bleak and that the old truism (that was mentioned in the first session by the Polish editor) about it not mattering who you vote for, the government always gets in. The next point was a reflection of Eisenhower’s speech on the military industrial complex with the current security industry. What has happened to all of the campaigning politicians of yesteryear what is it that turns them into just another evil minister when they are in power.

Claire Fox is relating a Big Brother eviction into a liberty issue, which I am not sure I want to sign up to. Although her point about Endimol’s corruption of the big brother brand to stop it being as frightening as the Orwellian vision. She is continuing to talk utter shite about how reality tv is the problem. I really don’t think super nanny programs are really training people to be obedient.

Although it probably is quite good for organising questions, listing questioners 1 – 6 just really brings back memories of a certain programme that is about liberty being squashed.

Bloggers's Session

Sunny has introduced the panel, other famous bloggers have turned up an Bill Thompson has brought sarnies. We are starting of with mySociety and how the tools you use aren't the important thing but need to be used properly to get people working together. Heather Brooke is now talking about open data (w00t) and how the the data being open is a tool of free speech as with the original data people can see past the spin to what is really going on. Using her two famous examples of local crime data and MPs expenses. “Journalism” whether MSM, blogging, or a campaign group needs to cleverly use freedom of information requests etc in order to get this data out and show people the benefit. Of course when you convince the people they want the data free they can convince the government that.

Ben Goldacre although not a liberties campaigner is here to tell us to all put our efforts online. He contends that political blogging is opinion/invective while science blogging is an extension of undergrads etc publishing their university work. Then criticism moves to the paid academic sites which get subverted by bloggers. Using the Dore cure as an example. The great thing about blogging and the internet is the fact that everything is automatically searchable and it becomes part of the global repository of knowledge. I am going to assume that I don’t need to relate the Durham and LBC stories to you lot, you all read Bad Science don’t you?

Last but not least Phil Booth from NO2ID wants us to think about thinking about the effect you need to make. Focus your attempts to change on your issue and target, get everyone to look at it a thousand eyes are significantly better than one. As well as freedom of information, use Data Subject Access requests to indentify to people how are collecting your data. Go out looking for other people who have the same itch you have join groups like ORG

A question from the floor links back to the press freedom session, how does libel threats affect bloggers, The NZ blackout has been brought up and there is talk that the internet being gold rush country.

BG’s reaction to the libel question is that in many cases not having any assets can be a help as they might dissuade people from suing, but in the end it is only a hastle not having your leg cut off. If you have to do a Mclibel with a friend and a camera. HB is also responding about libel, if she didn’t love the work she wouldn’t do it, investigative work not as well paid for by newspapers as other forms and also a big risk from libel.

Take down notices are an indicator that somebody doesn’t want people to see something there should be a tool that archives content spots it disappearing and the posts it to a suitable set of world wide cache sites.

Protect yourselves by insuring your webhost will let you fight your own battle, use wikileaks to get “hot documents” off your hands.

Someone from the FT asked about the relationship between MSM and blogging which lead into a question that was asked about why Data formats from the UN etc are in formats that are easily parse able but uk data is haphazard and of course the data and definition has changed so if you get 50 years. Bill Thompson has been named checked on API works.

Political engagement was brought up by a green politician who feels bombarded with different contact methodologies, he wasn’t really delt with so much in the session but I manage to catch him afterwards to chat, he recognised my name from ORG-Discuss.

Press Freedoms

After suitably fulsome introductions we are underway, Alan Rusbridger has meandered off onto the issues of press economics. I felt for a moment that it was going to be an attack on blogging etc, but now he is off on restrictions to the freedom of the press with libel tourism. After a round up of how costly libel is for the press in this country and how the Tesco case has effected reporting on tax avoidance with numbers about how much subsequent reporting costs to get cleared by the legal team. This is going to become a true restriction on what gets reported.

We have moved on to Fatima Bhutto who is talking about *real* restrictions on press freedom, because while libel laws do stop you from continuing to publish it doesn’t give you too much fear of the knock on the door in the night. Her current points are based on new laws about ‘cyber crime’ being used out of proportion to prevent many kinds of dissent and “ant-democratic” practice, for example having a fake email account has a jail punishment attached and anti-spamming laws can be used to arrest people for sending out information to mailing lists. Censorship laws in Pakistan are being used to stop people hearing about the rule of law in parts of the country being handed over to those that wish to have a more religious bent.

Andrew Gilligan has started with the idea that the database that the government wants to put details of all our phone calls and emails in is an attack on press freedoms as no-one will come forward as an anonymous source as they will think that all contact into newspapers will be tracked. Next crack downs on whistleblowers, the only two people who have been arrested over the JCM shooting were the people who received the leak about him not wearing a heavy coat and running etc. Many other examples, that I don’t have the typing speed to note down. He has also brought up the closure of papers and economics as a press freedom issue, redundancies mean that not enough time for full investigative pieces. There is also a fine point being made that the media in the past have been as guilty of impinging on people’s liberties as defending. He is trying to claim that was just the bad old days of the red tops, I am not convinced that the tabloids are as much reformed as he does. The press has to make it’s case to the public, again with the press being better that the 80s still with not being convinced.

Nick Cohen has warned the chair she may need to lawyer him, he also thinks that their needs to be a change in how we think about rights and liberties. Apparently the judiciary cannot be relied on, that they are “establishment” now dovetailing into AR’s stuff on libel and explaining how it is about reputation. Apparently people whose reputation are already in tatters shouldn’t have access to libel because it is about reputation. Using Roman Polanski Vs Vanity fair as an example. Next example is also about libel tourism and how they are a threat to freedom of speech not just here but around the world if it can be said to have to been published here. Fabulously dodgy generalisation on which constituent groups go to which law firm. Good investigative journalism need the newspapers to back them up, the stamp of authority, bloggers will not be able to take up the mantle.

The chair has popped and is talking about extending protections such as the the Renold’s defence, including possibly setting up a statuary defence along those lines for journalism, there should be specific defences about publishing stuff about public figures in the public interest. Joanne is also suggesting that many of the current erosions of freedoms are going after journalists and sources.

Going to publish before the Q&A will do another post if that throws up good stuff.

My picked ‘stream’

Well in the end I decided to pick a stream about stuff I know little about but is still interesting, as I am well in touch with quite a lot of the database/politics stuff I have gone for media based stuff. So session six ‘Press Freedoms’ for the morning and session nine, “who rules, is there a media-political class” for the afternoon. Of course the fact that this gets me a seat and a power socket for the lunchtime bloggers conference is nothing to do with it ;-)

Of course this isn’t an official stream like you get at more geeky conferences, but interestingly this does seem to a) a very popular session b) of course has a number of people with cameras and notebooks out and c) where quite a lot of the twiterati of the conference are.

Actually having looked up and seen how packed to the gunnels it is I am very glad I got here early and grabbed a spot!

The crisis of liberty.

The first plenary session is underway, which at the moment isn’t very coherent^[1] but is full of good atmosphere'. interestingly despite even the conference organisers playing to the stereotype that the audience was a bunch of tree-hugging vegetarian Guardian readers the Conservative MP got a good response. You can probably guess what Helena Kennedy said, all good.

The gentleman now speaking is trying to persuade us that all of this database state stuff is about making life easier for us, he has already said he doesn’t believe one big database would actually bring the ‘managerial efficiencies’ that others are claiming, but he then goes on to hide behind the idea that everyone else is asking for our data so why shouldn’t the government. Luckily before he was lynched Georgina Henry pointed out you can’t be fined or put in jail for refusing to fill in the survey attached to subscribing to a magazine.

Now we are coming back to the questions raised  by Dominic Grieve and Helena Kennedy about what is in the water at the home office. Ken Macdonald is starting with some justification about how those in security and crime based ministries get the chapter and verse on the worst case every morning and then set out to try and protect everyone and this is what leads to the disproportionate measures that have been brought in by the last several governments.

^[1]OK apart from Mr Database state, it has now pulled together.

Convention on Modern Liberty

Well after an interesting night (the cheep and cheerful hotel was delightfully both, thin walls and windows did mean lots of noise though) I am here at the convention. Sat in the main hall where they are showing the best of the videos that have been being posted to the web in the run up to the convention.

There are two things I really want to say, the first is how impressed I am by just what a cross section of society there are here, but only in a socioeconomic context, in an ethnic sense the panels and speakers represent a far broader cross section that the audience does. I am not going to attempt to suggest reasons why, I am no expert on these matters, but I very much doubt it is from a lack of trying. I definitely think that it will be one of the things I will be asking the organisers about after, especially in terms of how to fix it next time.

The other is to say thanks to Glyn who is indeed a terribly useful chap.

I am resisting the temptation to liveblog the opening sessions on twitter, mainly because while I have gained access to the intertubes I don’t currently have a socket and I’m not sure how long this battery will last.

I knew it was too good to be true.

David Blunkett's repositioning continues apace in the Grauniad's liberty central. Of course as soon as you read it, it falls apart and you can see the spin and bullshit shining through.

We will ignore simple jurisdictional naiveté such as suggestions the information commissioner's position should be strengthened to deal with issues such as the Facebook T&Cs or utter laugh out loud lines like 'We are not a "surveillance state"' given the ridiculous number of cameras in use in this country and move strait onto the meat.

There is a misconception that the database for biometric passports and ID cards might be misused. That's why I'm coming to the conclusion that we may have to consider simply making passports universal.

Well I suppose to be generous, if you suggest that having a huge great database of everyone to be data-mined by government and lost in the post by contractors is the intended purpose of the database then is won't me misused. If by making passports universal, you mean we all have to have one, then that really isn't any different from an ID card now is it? I have written about the cards and the database so often that it even bores me, but the utter rubbish that they troop out in their defence makes me want tap-dance with anger.

I am coming to the conclusion that the national identity database is the single, solitary, biggest threat to national security we face. We are giving terrorists a central one-stop-shop location to have to break into to find out where all our constables and members of Her Majesty’s forces and the intelligence services live. Perhaps the first time this system gets broken or breeched the Chief Executive of the Identity and Passport Service will get charged with "Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc".

The other thing I want to take issue with in the article is the suggestion that we as a nation are "crying wolf" I would disagree, the boy in that story caused himself the issues by raising the alarm incorrectly and having the village react each time. I don't think that the current groundswell of protest at the moment is based on any false premises and Parliament (our village) isn't reacting. To back his Aesopian premise he also suggests that Stella Rimington was merely rambling on and apparently she doesn't understand the 'the genuine threat that new forms of terrorism pose' which kind of left me wondering whether the chutzpah of this man has an end.

Of all of it I think that commitment to freeing people from the fear and instability is the bit that is the worst attempt to misrepresent the 'Blunkett Position' he, along with Jaquie Smith and pretty much every other minister or prominent politician to speak on the subject in recent times, have cause far, far more widespread and persistent terror that anyone trying to blow things up in this country has.

The Independent: Blunkett warns over 'Big Brother' Britain

Ha ha hahahahah ha ha ha hahaha hahahahahahah *gasps for air* hahaha.

David Blunkett, who introduced the idea of identity cards when Home Secretary, will issue a stark warning to the Government tomorrow that it is in danger of abusing its power by taking Britain towards a “Big Brother” state...

Read more on this story at the Independent

The micro-dicked weasel

The micro-dicked weasel (Mustela diem) is a small mammal of the family Mustelidae. In Europe it is known as the cockless weasel or short-dick weasel.

Physical Description
The micro-dicked weasel is a member of the family Mustelidae, which includes martens, mink, otters, ferrets, and wolverines. The micro-dicked weasel's low legs, wide hind-quarters, and poor diet give it a pronounced waddle. The micro-dicked weasel's skin secretes a thick, syrupy oil which gives it's coat a greasy sheen.

Wondering what this is about?

Consistency in Parliament?

There is an Early Day Motion about Google and gambling adverts. Of the people who have signed it, only the following voted against the third reading of the Gambling Act 2005:

• Andrew MacKinlay
• Bob Spink
• David Hamilton
• David Taylor
• Elfyn Llwyd
• Ian Davidson
• Kelvin Hopkins

All the others should examine their position on this matter, unless they were actually in opposition to the bill but didn't vote due to a "Pairing" arrangement (pretty much impossible to tell).

What sessions should I go to at the convention on Modern Liberty?

I am having a bit of a dilemma; I don't know which sessions I most want to go to at the convention? If you are going which sessions are you going to and if you can't go which would you want to go to? I know Sunny is organising a bloggers’ summit over lunch, should we also try and parcel out the sessions and promise to blog about the ones we are going to, or are the bloggers’ carnival already organising that? Would people be open to the idea of trying to find a group of ten other people they are already connected to in some way and meet up at the end of the day for a winding down natter about the sessions they all went to and the highlights?

What do you think?

For your information the sessions are:

Morning Sessions 11.45 - 13.00

1. Judges and Politicians - who should decide?
2. Human rights and global responses
3. Business gets personal - can privacy have a future?
4. Faiths and freedoms
5. The Conservatives and civil liberties
6. Press freedom
7. The Police
8. The English tradition of liberty and the national question
9. Xenophobia
10. Democracy and liberty
11. Liberty at work

Afternoon Sessions 14.00 - 15.15

1. How dangerous is the database state and ‘transformational government’ to our civil liberties?
2. Why can’t Parliament protect our liberties against the executive?
3. 3. How do we stop rights and freedoms being a political football?
4. The Left and liberty
5. Liberty, sovereignty and republicanism: can the Leveller tradition be revived in the 21st Century?
6. Torture and the decline in fundamental human rights standards
7. Are human rights universal or a privilege of citizenship?
8. Love and liberty
9. Who rules: is there a media-political class?
10. Child’s play? Equality and young people
11. Can liberty survive the slump?

More on the Latitude storm in a teacup.

As a follow up to my polemic about Privacy International's noise making on the Google Latitude issue, when are they going to make a fuss about Tom Tom and Fireeagle. Where are the scaremongering suggestions that people will install software on your sat-nav if you leave it on the table in the pub? Or that you'll be given a poised chalice GPS unit by friends, family or work in order to spy on your every move?

The prospect is just as scary as it is for phones and latitude i.e. not at all.

Privacy International are too stupid to own a mobile phone.

Privacy International are at the centre of a storm of ill-informed self righteous indignation over Google latitude. Firstly they claim that people will have it installed and run on their phones because they have left it on the table in the pub. What? Yes, when I wander off in a public place I leave a piece of equipment worth £300 unattended! Even if someone did manage to sneak off with it they would have to get past the fact that it is a) code locked and b) encrypted. To be honest I would be worrying far more about them reading other things on my phone if someone did break into it.

The other scenarios they mention are to do with someone giving you a phone as a gift or for work with latitude running on it and you don’t notice. Are these people producing new stealth versions of phone operating systems?^[1] The Google maps application that empowers latitude updates from your phone is perfectly spottable when it enters its "just keep the updates going mode". Even if they did manage that trick I suspect they would have try and persuade you to never use the Google map application yourself as it asks you every time you select exit if you want it to keep your location updated, if nothing else that might rouse suspicions.

This has also brought on the usual patronising depressing rubbish stated about the internet and privacy to the fore once more, that people are sleep walking their way to giving away all their data. Complete toss!

Firstly I only publish on the internet what I want to publish, compare and contrast how easy it is to find my email address with how difficult it is to find my phone number. I am not a simpleton. If you can see exactly where I am it is because I want you to know, if you are anyone else you only get a more approximate idea of where I am and strangely if this ever became an issue I would stop.

Secondly you wonder how many of the people going on about this have credit cards, oyster cards, gmail/yahoo/msn email accounts, loyalty cards etc. all of which give personal data to other parties.

Thirdly wouldn’t it be better to put all the effort making noise about this non-story into real liberty issues like ID Cards, the attacks on data protection in the Coroners and Justice Bill and the rise in the use of anti-terrorist powers for other purposes. These are the sort of things I expect to talk about at the Convention on Modern Liberty whereas I really don't feel there is any real need to debate latitude.

^[1]I except that this is possible, but doubt anyone outside the defence industry would be likely to do this and you will almost certainly signed your life away in your contract in that situation anyway.