News International's dismissal of the parliamentary report on the News of the World phone scandal just shows their contempt for the law, MPs and other media
For a government that makes much of its record on protecting children from cruelty and abuse, it is extraordinary that the truth about Yarl's Wood is that it damages terribly the children held there
Thursday 12 November 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Last night the inventor of DNA profiling, Sir Alec Jeffreys, condemned the government's plans, announced yesterday, to keep the DNA of innocent people on the national DNA database for six years in defiance of a ruling by the European court of human rights.
Thursday 5 November 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
It is difficult to think of two more sinister New Labour figures than Phil Woolas, minister for immigration, and Lady Delyth Morgan, parliamentary under-secretary for children. They are joined in unholy alliance in the foreword to the new government guidelines on safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009.
Wednesday 4 November 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Let's see if we can tease out the logic of the latest New Labour backflip. The former foreign office minister Kim Howells suggests that the policy in Afghanistan is not working and it is time to consider withdrawing troops and putting the money saved as result into the UK Border Agency and greater surveillance and monitoring in Britain.
Wednesday 4 November 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Let's see if we can tease out the logic of the latest New Labour backflip. The former foreign office minister Kim Howells suggests that the policy in Afghanistan is not working and it is time to consider withdrawing troops and putting the money saved as result into the UK Border Agency and greater surveillance and monitoring in Britain.
Thursday 29 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
"In the areas of security and liberty many would argue (and I agree) that there has been too much legislation," wrote Charles Clarke last week. Some may experience a sense of vindication reading this but I believe the proper reaction is nearer scorn, for the article contains neither concession nor apology, but is merely an attempt to reposition Labour before the next election.
Wednesday 28 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Listen to mayor Dorothy Thornhill. Her council has just banned parents
from watching their own children at two council play areas in Watford.
Quoted in the Watford Observer
this evidently simple-minded woman says, "Sadly, in today's climate,
you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's
playground."
Wednesday 28 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Listen to mayor Dorothy Thornhill. Her council has just banned parents from watching their own children at two council play areas in Watford. Quoted in the Watford Observer this evidently simple-minded woman says, "Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground."
Monday 26 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The shocking Guardian report into the surveillance operations run by the police National Public Order Intelligence Unit makes it clear that the right of free protest in Britain now hangs in the balance, and that the very expression of opinion and attendance at meetings is enough for an individual to be categorised as an enemy of society.
Wednesday 21 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
If there's one minister whose every action betrays the menace of the government's intent it is Jack Straw. His malicious drive against freedom and openness is phenomenal.
Monday 19 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The government's climbdown on proposals that the police should keep innocent people's DNA for between six and 12 years should not be mistaken for a change of heart, nor should we celebrate this as a victory for article 8, the right to privacy, of the Human Rights Act.
Wednesday 14 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
When dealing with the Home Office you become aware of the dim, dogged nature of a primitive life-form. Last week the department which runs the UK Border Agency issued a statement which appeared to suggest that it was retreating on the issue of gene tests being used to determine race and origin. Science and Nature magazines both attacked the plan, the former by quoting scientists and geneticists who were horrified at the idea of untested science being used by unknown scientists to decide a person's race and origin, and therefore future.
Tuesday 13 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Sometimes things go right. Yesterday Jacqui Smith, the former home secretary, rose in parliament to apologise for nominating her main home in West Midlands as a second home; and a report was published vindicating Damian Green after the MP's arrest last November.
Friday 2 October 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
A Home Office experiment with the DNA of asylum seekers to establish their likely race and place of origin is causing outrage and alarm among scientists.
Tuesday 29 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The
mildly jubilant scenes at the Labour party conference when Gordon Brown
announced that there would be no compulsory ID cards in the next
parliament tell you one thing: that people in the hall understand how
unpopular the ID card is and what a lead weight it will be at the next
election. But of course the speech makes little difference to the ID
card and by no means does it signal an end to the government's ID
management lunacy.
Friday 25 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The rise in complaints against police in England and Wales by 8% to more than 30,000 individual grievances last year cannot be easily dismissed by the suggestion that people have simply become more aware of the complaints procedure. There are important underlying trends that the police and politicians would be wrong to ignore.
Thursday 24 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
One of the important elements of the government's desecration of liberty and rights – the use of "secret" evidence to impose control orders, or house arrest, on terror suspects – now looks to be in the advanced stages of decay. The home secretary, Alan Johnson, has written to lawyers representing a former imam known by the initials AE to say that in the light of the law lords' June ruling, the control order on their client will be revoked immediately.
Wednesday 23 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion," says the Human Rights Act. This freedom includes "the right to manifest his (or her) religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance." That's a fine aspiration but of course the Human Rights Act (HRA) isn't all it's cracked up to be by its supporters. Take the recent case of a 54-year-old nurse facing disciplinary action for wearing her confirmation cross, she was forced to accept an offer of redeployment to a non-nursing role at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
Friday 18 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Dominic Grieve's policy paper Reversing the Rise of the Surveillance State is welcome but even though some important principles are expressed, it is difficult not to feel that the Conservatives are just doing enough to distinguish themselves from Labour before the next election.
Thursday 17 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
A poll run by PoliticsHome this week revealed a fascinating result to the question: "Do you think in general, the state has too much or too little of a say in what people can and cannot do?" Nearly four-fifths of the sample (79%) answered that the state had too much of a say, while only 8% believe the state has too little say.
Tuesday 15 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
There is a new phrase in law enforcement circles, although it is more about enforcing the state's prejudice than any law. It is the Potential Dangerous Person, or PDP. This label is given by Northumberland and Cleveland police forces to someone who is suspected of crimes but who has not been charged, let alone found guilty of an offence. Under this new designation they will be targeted as criminals, watched and no doubt harassed.
Friday 11 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
When police stop and search two children under anti-terror measures there can be little doubt that a law, designed to prevent terrorism, is being roundly abused by officers who seem to enjoy the authority to question any innocent citizen they care to pick on.
Thursday 10 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
For two decades the police and Home Office have insisted that DNA evidence is 100% reliable and that the frantic acquisition of DNA samples from innocent people, as well those convicted of a crime, will make Britain a safer place. But today, on the 25th anniversary of Sir Alec Jeffrey's discovery of the genetic fingerprint, its worth examining important new research from Israel which proves that DNA evidence can be manipulated and that DNA samples may be fabricated. A disturbing possibility for those whose DNA profiles are kept on the police national DNA database.
Friday 4 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
A week or two away from the land of surveillance and you realise what a very strange place Britain has become. On my return from holiday I understood one frightening truth, which is that surveillance systems and databases have become as much a part of the country's infrastructure as the road or rail networks. No government, however liberal or determined, has the power to dismantle the apparatus that Labour has put in place.
Wednesday 2 September 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
No doubt some eyes among Salisbury's residents glided over the following little news story with a sense of reassurance but if you're like me you will find something deeply disturbing about it, especially in the unquestioning attitude of the newspaper. The reporter from the Salisbury Journal tells of an event held for schoolchildren at Salisbury Arts Centre with all the mild compliance of a trainee on the Communist party newspaper in east Berlin.
Returning to Britain from a summer holiday abroad, you begin to notice things that perhaps escaped your attention before - the huge number of CCTV cameras that infest our public spaces and, much less obviously, the atmosphere of watchfulness and control that has now become a way of life. This is the regime that 12 years of New Labour have imposed on Britain, a place of unwavering suspicion, paranoia - and obsessive surveillance.
Monday 10 August 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The government must be quietly grateful to the distractions of August. Only Computer Weekly noticed that nine local authority workers have been sacked for accessing the personal records of celebrities, and their acquaintances held on the core database of the government's ID scheme.
Wednesday 5 August 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The stupidity, waste of time and contempt involved in the new points based visa system for artists and academics wanting to visit the UK has been laid bare by a report from the home affairs select committee.
This week, one of Parliament's most active bodies, the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), made up of both peers and MPs, reports on the allegations of government involvement in and knowledge of the torture of terrorist suspects by foreign powers. If you're like me, you find it hard to read anything about torture, but this report is very important because it makes plain these barbaric practices have been commissioned in our name.
Wednesday 29 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Here are some recent examples of the stupid, suspicious society we are creating. What they reveal is a state of mind that reveres regulations and authority over common sense. This is not something that has been imposed on Britain. Rather we have succumbed to a climate of fear and unreason in the belief that we will somehow be safer. Read these links and mourn the loss of something essential to the national character.
Tuesday 28 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
In a excellent pamphlet produced by the Centre for Policy Studies, advocating a new Great Reform Act, the author of Yes Minister, Sir Antony Jay, writes that we are "governed by an increasingly self-serving almost unaccountable political class who are even further out of touch with the interests and wishes of the British people than were the rural aristocracy 200 years ago." These words came to mind when I read that a YouGov poll had found that 79% of the public are opposed to the ID card scheme on the grounds that they want the estimated £5bn cost of the scheme spent on something else.
Thursday 23 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
To live on the left is to live optimistically, writes my colleague Polly Toynbee. This may be true of Polly, whose smart idealism no one can deny, but I am afraid you couldn't say the same of New Labour, which has exhibited a profoundly pessimistic view of society since it came into power 12 years ago.
Wednesday 22 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Where does the joylessness come from? Is there some central authority co-ordinating laws that result in the banning of musicians, artists and poets from British territory, the removal of unregistered tutors, entertainers and writers from contact with British children, or the perfectly nonsensical – and originally racist – form 696 that requires London music venues to give the names, private telephone numbers and addresses of all musicians appearing?
Tuesday 21 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
This afternoon Paul Lewis has an interesting update to a story I wrote about in April: "Abuse of police powers is unexceptional". You may remember Gemma Atkinson, who was detained for filming a police search of her boyfriend – today her lawyers have launched a high court challenge against the police.
Monday 20 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
A critical issue concerning ID cards is the possibility that the tax authorities will be able to access the national identity register to inspect the spending habits of individuals, revealed by their history of identity verifications.
Thursday 16 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Photographer Alex Turner has been arrested by Kent police for being "too tall" in an action which must cast further doubt on the collective sanity of Kent Police (see Kingsnorth) and which also suggests that some police forces are now really behaving as if we lived in police state, a phrase that I have been reluctant to use.
Saturday 11 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
There are no words in the thesaurus of insult that quite do justice to the UK Border Agency and the minister for borders and immigration, Phil Woolas. So let's just agree that new rules barring artists from visiting this country and so enriching our culture are some of the most contemptible ever devised, even by this narrow-minded apology for a government.
Monday 6 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
If you want a symbol of all that is vindictive and, frankly, dumb about New Labour it is the asbo. Until Alan Johnson became home secretary, this key Blairite response to antisocial behaviour looked as though it was quietly being allowed to die.
Thursday 2 July 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Evidence presented to the home affairs select committee on Monday suggests that Britain's plans to use airline, ferry and train operators to collect 53 pieces of information from everyone leaving the country may be illegal under EU law.
Tuesday 30 June 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The announcement today that a compulsory ID card trial for airside workers has been dropped makes clear that the new home secretary, Alan Johnson, a good union man, is not going to take on the British Airline Pilots' Association and other unions in the runup to the next election.
Monday 29 June 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Give local authorities a power and they abuse it. We have seen it with RIPA terror laws and the creation of largely useless CCTV systems: now the right to drink in public is being systematically attacked across the country by local authorities using powers to stop people having a good time in a park or a picnic with their friends.
Friday 26 June 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
News of the extraordinary state that Britain has got itself into has taken a long time to percolate to the outside world, but when people abroad begin to understand the extent to which the British have been robbed of their freedoms by the Labour government, they are astonished by the lack of reaction in parliament and from the people.
Thursday 18 June 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
A month ago I drew attention to the way in which the guillotine was being used by the government to cut short debate, when the pressures on parliament's timetable were in fact very few because of the huge holidays MPs were taking.
Tuesday 16 June 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The video released of police officers punching and Tasering a man lying on the ground speaks for itself. Once you give a weapon like this to the British police it will be used and abused as a weapon of punishment and torture.
Wednesday 10 June 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
A customer relations officer from Ellesmere Port has been electronically tagged for two months, given a curfew and ordered to pay £2,440.66 in costs for leaving a 15-week-old kitten alone for two days.
Monday 8 June 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Sixty years ago today George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, and this evening, as though to mark the anniversary of Orwell's last book, the former head of GCHQ, Sir David Pepper, slips from the shadows to tell the BBC's Who's Watching You programme that it has become necessary for the government to record all data from phone and internet traffic in the fight against terror.
Friday 5 June 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
To place his chief rival for the premiership in the Home Office, that graveyard of political careers, which has seen the unhappy departure from government of four out of five Labour home secretaries must have given Gordon Brown a rare moment of saturnine pleasure during the reshuffle.
Monday 25 May 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
A lawyer and
genetic scientist has raised the disturbing possibility of false
matches being made in the police national DNA database (NDNAD). He
suggests that the DNA database – which at the end of September 2008 had
4,343,624, samples, including those from hundreds of thousands of
innocent people – is now so large that it is mathematically predicted
an innocent person will be matched to a crime they did not commit.
Friday 22 May 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
In a speech two weeks ago, Jack Straw mocked my suggestion that Britain's pupils were being groomed for the surveillance society. I wonder how the justice secretary reacts to a story from Davenant Foundation School in Loughton, Essex, where pupils walked out of classrooms that were fitted with CCTV cameras – on the grounds that their civil liberties were being breached – and refused to return until the camera system had been turned off.
The anger is wholly
new. During BBC Question Time with Sir Menzies Campbell and Margaret
Beckett, I thought the audience might be minded to let poor Ming off
with 20 years' hard labour, but that it would surely offer no mercy to
the most heavily protected caravan enthusiast in the world, who has
refused to pay back £72,000 claimed on her properties and displayed a
defiance not seen since Elena Ceausescu was led from court and propped
up against a convenient wall.
A reaction was certainly to be expected after the Convention on Modern Liberty in February and commentators have rushed to deny that there is any such thing as a crisis of liberty and rights in Britain. What’s striking about the blowback is not so much the similarity of style and approach but the expression of unworldly faith in the state.
Wednesday 13 May 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Ever since the shooting of barrister Mark Saunders at his home in Markham Square, London, it seems that the police have too often killed, rather than wounded, disturbed people threatening the public with weapons.
Friday 1 May 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Julian Le Grand is a former adviser to Tony Blair, a London School of Economics academic and a contributor to that statist and authoritarian organ Prospect magazine. All of which may explain why he suggested in a lecture, this week, that people who have children out of wedlock should be automatically married by the state to stop them splitting up.
Friday 24 April 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
It is cost rather than privacy concerns that will save us from Labour's megalomaniac surveillance schemes – a point underlined this morning when David Cameron was interviewed on the Today programme.
Wednesday 22 April 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The Register recalls that in 2000, then National Criminal Intelligence Service director general John Abbott wrote to the Guardian with this assurance: Conspiracy theorists must not be allowed to get away with the ridiculous notion that law enforcement would or even could monitor all emails...
Monday 20 April 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The news that government officials have been passing intelligence on climate change activists to a power company serves to underline the unhealthy closeness between big business and the British government during the Labour years.
Thursday 16 April 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
It's difficult not to agree with Damian Green's comment outside the House of Commons after he was given news that he would not be prosecuted: "I cannot think of a better symbol of an out of touch, authoritarian, failing government that has been in power for too long," he said.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The arrest of 114 people on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, near Nottingham, is extremely worrying and may be regarded as further indication of a style of policing that has developed under this appalling government and is undermining the values and needs of a free society.
Thursday 9 April 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
The shocking video of Ian Tomlinson being assaulted has led to concern
about oppressive policing – and last week I heard about another case of
intimidation.
Monday, 30 March 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
It is difficult to feel much sympathy for Jacqui Smith, who launched
her latest attack on liberals over the weekend by putting the debate
about the balance between civil liberties and security in the context
of taxation.
Monday, 23 March 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
There comes a stage in a government's life when routine assessment concerning competence and managerial efficiency is replaced by questions about sanity. Reading Michael Wills musing about New Labour's plans for an enhanced bill of rights with all sorts of social and economic rights as well as defined responsibilities, I had that experience of watching an acquaintance descend into whimpering insanity.
Friday, 20 March 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
Rarely has there been a more pathetic arrest than that of 23-year-old university student Paul Saville, who was confronted by four members of Britain's new breed of petty minded police officers after writing in chalk on a pavement, "Liberty: the right to question. The right to ask: 'Are we free?"'
Thursday, 19 March 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
In less than a week the justice secretary has withdrawn or modified three authoritarian provisions, which is certainly proof that campaigning does work and ministers do listen when they think that opposition might have an electoral impact.
Thursday, 19 March 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
In as much as his powers allow him, Conor Gearty has had a second attempt to defend Labour against those who suggest that the party has mounted a campaign against liberties and rights since 1997.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009, Henry Porter's blog, guardian.co.uk
When you meet a colleague sporting the remains of his breakfast egg on his chin, it can be amusing not to point it out. That is usually my policy with David Aaronovitch, the Times columnist who once said that if weapons of mass destruction were n
