Henry Porter

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Sunday 20 September 2009,  The Observer

Even when out for dinner in a restaurant, we are not free from snooping CCTV cameras

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.

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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.

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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.

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Sunday 13 September 2009,  The Observer

In its final gibbering months this government continues to wage its tyrannical war on freedom

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.

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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.

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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.

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