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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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Sunday 18 October 2009, The Observer
The plight of the children of asylum seekers represents a sadly unexceptional failure of public conscience
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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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Sunday 4 October 2009, guardian.co.uk
Labour stripped away many civil liberties, and we should expect the Conservatives to do the same
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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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
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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.
Click here to read more at guardian.co.uk
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