Henry Porter

23 February 2010, 6.15 for 6.30pm, 55 Tufton Street, SW1, Centre for Policy Studies

New research from Big Brother Watch (pdf) has revealed that there are nearly 15,000 officers in local councils nationwide who can enter private property without requiring a warrant or police officer escort. The report builds on the 2006 Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet Crossing the Threshold by Harry Snook (pdf), which detailed the number of ways the State can enter a private home as of right - there were 266 distinct powers of entry then, and 1,043 now. Our panel of speakers will discuss the implications of this for civil liberties and whether action is needed to rebalance power in the relationship between the state and the citizen. Chaired by Jill Kirby, with speakers Dominic Grieve QC MP, Henry Porter, Harry Snook and Alex Deane.

Read more... | Watch videos of the speakers... | Read Henry Porter's blog...

February 21, 2010,  Alan Cheuse, Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Every step you take / I'll be watching you ... The refrain from the stalker's love song, "Every Breath You Take," by the Police, might serve as the epigram for this gripping new British thriller. The book tells of the dangers of an overreaching prime minister and his supporters, some of them multibillionaire media and public relations magnates. Over the course of a few years sometime in the near future, they create software programs and camera monitors that make it possible for government to know the private details of the population's hopes, dreams, fears and finances.

Read more...

February 7 2010,  Anna Mundow interviews Henry Porter, Boston Globe 

Henry Porter, political columnist for The Observer and UK editor of Vanity Fair, is the author of five novels including “Brandenburg Gate,” which was set during the fall of the Berlin Wall. Porter’s new novel, “The Bell Ringers” is a dark counterpoint to that previously optimistic vision. This superb political thriller depicts England in the near future as a place where fabricated security threats, state surveillance, and antiterrorist legislation advance political ambitions and control. Porter spoke from his home in London.

Read more at The Boston Globe...

3 February 2010,  Jennie Bristow, Spiked

Anthony Horowitz, author of the bestselling teenage spy novels, talks to Jennie Bristow about vetting and the poisoning of adult-child relations. 

Read more...

February 1, 2010,  By Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post

English journalist Henry Porter's "The Bell Ringers" (published in England last year as "The Dying Light") is one of many novels that have attempted to update "Nineteen Eighty-Four" -- and one of the more impressive. But while Orwell offered a worst-case scenario of what could happen 35 years in the future, Porter is writing about what, as he sees it, is already starting to happen... This is a sophisticated, engrossing and important political thriller. Porter wants us to see that the same technological tools that can be used to fight terrorism or to make government more efficient can also, in the wrong hands, be used to destroy freedom.

Read more at The Washington Post...

31 January 2010,  Mark George QC, The Observer

A noted Manchester QC writes to Observer columnist Henry Porter in support of his campaign

Read more...

23 Jan 2010,  Urmee Khan and Martin Beckford, Telegraph

Internet users are being spied on in their own home as the Government uses the threat of terrorism and the spread of child pornography to justify launching a dramatic expansion of surveillance society, according to a leading academic. 

Read more...

20 Jan 2010,  Richard Vize, Editor's blog, Health Service Journal

The vetting and barring scheme - introduced by the government in the wake of the Soham murders - will cost the NHS millions, put managers under intense pressure to report staff to the Independent Safeguarding Authority to cover their own backs, and could all too easily lead to innocent staff being barred from working with vulnerable adults and children. As HSJ reports this week, the widely criticised scheme will force managers to make moral judgments about staff behaviour and lifestyles. Draft guidance from the ISA circulated this month and being considered by the Department of Health identifies a wide range of personal characteristics which should prompt managers to consider whether to trigger an alert.

Read more...

19 January 2010,  Michael Savage, Independent

A series of botched IT projects has left taxpayers with a bill of more than £26bn for computer systems that have suffered severe delays, run millions of pounds over budget or have been cancelled altogether.

Read more...

19 January 2010,  Gerry Northam, File on Four, BBC Radio 4  AUDIO 40 mins

Six years after the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was founded, there are still concerns about the effectiveness and independence of policing the police, as BBC File On 4's Gerry Northam explains.

Read more... | Hear the broadcast... | Read the transcript (pdf)...

14 January 2010,  Jago Russell, Law Gazette

In 2002 the EU created the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), a fast-track system for extraditing people from one EU country to another. It was rushed in as part of Europe’s response to the terrorist threat, and was meant to help tackle serious cross-border crime more effectively.

Read more...

14th January 2010,  By John Ozimek • The Register

Police officers could find themselves on the wrong end of a citizen’s arrest if they follow advice issued by Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, after the European Court of Human Rights slapped the UK's stop and search laws.

Read more...

14 January 2010,  Graham Stuart, guardian.co.uk

Government proposals requiring officials to make annual visits to homes where children are taught are an invasion of civil liberties

Read more...

By Nick Heath, 12 January 2010, Silicon.com

Labour's track record on bringing home major new IT systems is littered with messy and expensive failures - from the Rural Payment's Agency Single Payment Scheme (RPA SPS) system, which delayed the payment of £1.5bn of subsidy payments to British farmers, to the Department for Transport's shared services centre, a project intended to save £57m that will cost £81m to complete.

Read more...

11 January 2010, Letters, The Guardian

We believe that schedule 1 of the children, schools and families bill represents an unacceptable imposition of state control over families.

Read more...

10 January 2010,  Marcel Berlins, guardian.co.uk

A strange kind of criminal trial begins in the royal courts of justice in London this Tuesday.

Read more...

7 January 2010,  by Robert Heslett, Law Gazette

To my mind, legal aid is no less of a ‘frontline service’ than health, education and policing.

Read more...

January 7 2010,  Raj Jayadev and Aram James, New America Media

In what is being heralded as a landmark decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently declared that police officers could be held liable for using a Taser without proper cause.

Read more...

7 January 2010,  Joshua Rozenberg, Law Gazette

The biggest reforms to the law of bribery for more than a century will come under detailed scrutiny today as the government’s Bribery Bill begins its committee stage in the House of Lords. You would expect a bill of this sort to criminalise both the person who pays a bribe and the person who accepts one. And so it does. But the Bribery Bill also makes it lawful for a very broad range of law enforcement agencies to provide or receive what would otherwise be improper financial inducements. They include not just the police, prosecutors and bodies such as HM Revenue & Customs and the UK Borders Agency. Clause 12 would allow every environmental health officer and local authority trading standards officer in the land to go around handing out or accepting cash if they can prove, on the balance of probabilities, that this is necessary for the prevention, investigation or detection of ‘serious’ crime.

Read more...

Wednesday, 6 January 2010,  Julian Baggini, The Independent

...For now that both government and opposition have embraced the happiness agenda, sceptical voices are warning that this marks a disturbing intrusion of the state into the private lives of citizens, and that, far from being benign, attempts to regulate the subjective states of citizens could have sinister implications.

Read more...

6 January 2010,  by Linda Geddes,  New Scientist

WHEN a defendant's DNA appears to match DNA found at a crime scene, the probability that this is an unfortunate coincidence can be central to whether the suspect is found guilty. The assumptions used to calculate the likelihood of such a fluke - the "random match probability" - are now being questioned by a group of 41 scientists and lawyers based in the US and the UK. These assumptions have never been independently verified on a large sample of DNA profiles, says the group. What's more, whether some RMPs are truly as vanishingly small as assumed has been called into question by recent insights into DNA databases in the US and Australia.

Read more...

4th January 2010,  Damian Green, Daily Mail

In my 12 years as an MP, I have never seen such extraordinary letters as the ones sent to me by innocent citizens who have found that their DNA is held on a Government database. Hundreds of thousands of us have been affected and many, rightly, are very angry.

Read more...

27 December 200909,  Big Brother Watch  REPORT

Research conducted by Big Brother Watch - the new campaign fighting intrusions on privacy and protecting liberties - reveals that there are at least 14,793 officers in 73 per cent of local councils in Britain who can enter private property without requiring a warrant or police escort

Read more...   |  Download PDF...

23 December 2009,  Andrea Leadsom, Big Brother Watch

Last week I had the pleasure of accompanying a group of students from Sponne and Campion Schools to the Houses of Parliament.  But over our sandwiches afterwards, sitting on a wall in the drizzle of a cold Monday in Westminster, one of the students raised an issue with me that I found truly shocking. He wanted to know if I thought that fingerprinting/iris scanning of children in schools might breach their Human Rights under EU legislation. 

Read more...

18 December 2009,  Big Brother Watch  REPORT

Research conducted by Big Brother Watch reveals that in less than 10 years the number of CCTV cameras controlled by local councils has risen from 21,000 to 60,000.

Read more...  |  Download the report (pdf)...

15 December 2009,  guardian.co.uk

Police community support officers stopped Italian student Simona Bonomo under anti-terrorism legislation for filming buildings in London. Moments later, she was arrested by other officers, held in a police cell and fined. She talks Paul Lewis through the footage she recorded of her conversation with the PSCOs

Watch the video...

14 December 2009,  Josie Appleton and James Panton, Spiked

Two key campaigners against Britain’s vetting database argue that Ed Balls’ ‘u-turn’ isn’t nearly enough: the vetting regime must be dismantled.

Read more...

14th December 2009,  Chris Cheesman, Amateur Photographer

This is the guidance that Metropolitan Police staff and officers have been told to follow, as supplied by the Met to Amateur Photographer 

Read more...

11 December 2009, Paul Lewis, guardian.co.uk

It felt like a minor terror alert. Four security guards were watching me, whispering into microphones on their collars. A plainclothes police officer had just covered my camera lens, mentioned the words "hostile reconnaissance" and told me I would be followed around the city if I moved. 

Read more...

Tuesday December 8 2009, Hansard Society

Listen to the audio of the Hansard Society's Democracy Forum 'Civil liberties: are we placing ourselves at the mercy of the state?' with speakers Henry Porter, Sir Ian Blair and Peter Oborne.

Downlaod podcast...

3 December 2009,  By Hilary Wilce,  Independent

The answer appears to be a resounding yes. According to the law firm Cobbetts, a biometric system like this raises issues of data protection, and unless the school is rigorous in how it obtains, stores and uses these fingerprints it could be in breach of the Data Protection Act. The new system also raises questions of possible unlawful pupil surveillance.

Read more...

Thursday, 3 December 2009,  Independent

If police stop and search you, the first thing you should ask is on what grounds they are conducting the search and under what powers.

Read more...

3 December 2009,  Independent

I was on the South Bank of the Thames trying to compose a shot of the Houses of Parliament last week when two police officers stopped me.

Read more...

1 December 2009,  Valerie Hartwich,  Spiked

Valerie Hartwich spoke to the angry academics who are taking a stand against stringent new visa rules for foreigners wishing to study in Britain. 

Read more...

29 November 2009,  BBC News

BBC News photographer Jeff Overs was stopped and questioned for taking photographs in Westminster. Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, for which he takes photographs, Mr Overs said he was worried that policing against terrorism was making the UK feel like "the Eastern Bloc".

Watch the video...

27 November 2009  By Marc Settle Producer, BBC Radio 4

The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci - whose long and distinguished CV also includes The Day Today, Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge - is one of a number of leading figures who fear the rules of comedy writing in Britain are changing ... "There is this build-up of self-censorship taking place," Iannucci told Radio 4's PM programme.

Read more...

26th November 2009, Daily Mail 

A senior Tory MP has accused a council of 'kidnapping' a child after a couple were forced to give up their nine-week-old baby girl for adoption.

Watch the speech...  |  Read more...    

23 November 2009,  Anthony Barnett, Our Kingdom

For the first time the EU-wide moves towards a surveillance society and a database state are set out in all their appalling glory. A major report has recently been published, NeoConOpticon. It has its own webpage . The authors, with Ban Hayes of Statewatch in the lead, have put together the military and the domestic aspects of the European Security Research Programme.

Read more...  |  Download the pdf...

24 November 2009  Human Genetics Commission

Balancing individual rights and the public interest in the governance and use of the National DNA Database

Read more...  |  Download PDF...

November 20, 2009,  Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial)

Read more...

19 November 2009, Rupert Goodwins,  ZDNet.co.uk

Without debate, without public consulation, without any form of mandate, Lord Mandelson - an unelected politician - is preparing to place the rights of powerful industrial concerns above those of Parliament and above ours.

Read more...

19 November 2009,  Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

A source close to the British Labour Government has just given me reliable information about the most radical copyright proposal I've ever seen. Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988). What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright.

Read more...

5 November 2009, Chris Huhne, guardian.co.uk

Powers originally given only to the police and police agencies to seize criminal assets are now being extended to councils and other public bodies, including the Royal Mail. Once again, legal powers voted in to deal with terrorism and organised crime are being rolled out for use against minor offences.

Read more...

30 September 2009,  Stephen Cragg,  guardian.co.uk

The government's legal aid proposals endanger one of the pillars of our democracy – the ability to call government to account

Read more...

29 September 2009,  By Ian Dunt, Politics.co.uk

Brown's plans to tackle anti-social behaviour and teen pregnancy are scary, dangerous and Stalinist.

Read more...

September 29, 2009,  By John Travis,  ScienceMag.org 

Scientists are greeting with surprise and dismay a project to use DNA and isotope analysis of tissue from asylum seekers to evaluate their nationality and help decide who can enter the United Kingdom. “Horrifying,” “naïve,” and “flawed” are among the adjectives geneticists and isotope specialists have used to describe the “Human Provenance pilot project,” launched quietly in mid-September by the U.K. Border Agency. Their consensus: The project is not scientifically valid--or even sensible.

Read more... 

23rd September 2009, By John Ozimek • The Register

Radical Think Tank Open Europe has this week exposed a study by the EU that could lead to the creation of a massive cross-Europe database, amassing vast amounts of personal data on every single citizen in the EU. 

Read more...

17 September 2009, Pauline Hadaway, Manifesto Club

A new report, by Pauline Hadaway, director of Belfast Exposed gallery, reveals the growing restriction of citizen photography. Policing the Public Gaze: The Assault on Citizen Photography shows that although there is no overarching ban, there has been a creeping restriction of everyday photography - by community safety wardens, private security guards, and self-appointed ‘jobsworths’.

Read more... |  Download report...

17 September 2009,  Josie Appleton,  guardian.co.uk

From nativity plays to fooball matches we must defend amateur photographers from creeping restrictions

Read more...

September 17, 2009,  David Hare,  The Times

A message for politicians of all parties – with your expenses comes a responsibility . . .

Read more...

14 Sep 2009, Telegraph

Shortly before the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill completed its journey through Parliament in October 2006, the Government tabled no fewer than 25 new clauses, four new schedules and 250 amendments. The Bill had already been debated in the House of Lords and had been before a Commons committee. Because of timetabling restrictions, the flood of last-minute amendments received cursory scrutiny, if any. This is the Bill that established the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), which will decide the suitability of an estimated 11 million people either to work or take part in voluntary activity with children or the infirm.

Read more...

1, Sep 2009, By Alex Stevenson, Politics.co.uk

The government's addiction to lawmaking is driving the legal world "mad", the new head of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has told politics.co.uk. Paul Mendelle QC claimed lawyers have been overwhelmed by the volume of legislation passed by the New Labour government. Accusing ministers of "legislative hyperactivity", he said: "We have been deluged with criminal justice legislation at a rate several times that of the previous decade. "Law should be accessible to the people who are affected by it. Barristers and judges find it increasingly hard to work out exactly what the law says.

Read more...

August 30 2009, Zach Woodham, Our Kingdom

Last month the Home Office announced that the National Identity Card Scheme would no longer be compulsory and that implementation would be delayed until 2011 or 2012. Online magazine The Register has, however, uncovered proposals to merge the National Identity Register with Criminal Records Bureau background checks, potentially forcing millions of people into ‘applying' for an Identity card that they neither want nor need in order to avoid facing unemployment.

Read more... 

September 3 2009, 4pm | August 30 2009, 4pm,  Open Book, BBC Radio 4   

Fay Weldon and Henry Porter discuss the attractions and difficulties of setting a novel in the near future and explain why they have both set their new novels in the year 2013. 

Read more...  |  Listen...  [ interview begins at 19.27 ]

19th August 2009,  Vince Cable,  Daily Mail

A quarter of a century has passed since 1984, the titular year of George Orwell’s novel which described a world constantly spied upon by an all-powerful dictator, the fearsome Big Brother. It never happened. Orwell’s nightmarish vision was realised, for a while, in communist Eastern Europe but the Stasi and similar agencies have now gone. And yet in a quiet, insidious way our own democratic society is producing a surveillance state that Big Brother would have been proud to call his own.

Read more...

August 18 2009,  BBC World Service  AUDIO  10 min

Julian Le Grand, former adviser to Blair and reported adviser to Cameron, on the state's right, as he sees it, to intervene (6 mins). Dr Madsen Pirie, president and founder of the Adam Smith Institute, isn't persuaded (4 mins).

Hear the interviews...

July 17 2009,  FSI Genetics

Over the past twenty years, DNA analysis has revolutionized forensic science, and has become a dominant tool in law enforcement. Today, DNA evidence is key to the conviction or exoneration of suspects of various types of crime, from theft to rape and murder. However, the disturbing possibility that DNA evidence can be faked has been overlooked. It turns out that standard molecular biology techniques such as PCR, molecular cloning, and recently developed whole genome amplification (WGA), enable anyone with basic equipment and know-how to produce practically unlimited amounts of in vitro synthesized (artificial) DNA with any desired genetic profile.

Read more...

July 9 2009,  Politics Weekly Podcast, guardian.co.uk   AUDIO 33:13 min

Nick Cohen and Henry Porter join Allegra Stratton and Tom Clark to discuss the week in politics

Listen at guardian.co.uk...

June 2009,  The Manifesto Club  REPORT

The Manifesto Club has launched a report on the police abuse of alcohol confiscation powers. Alcohol control zones were supposedly created to tackle serious public disorder - yet police officers are confiscating alcohol from people who are doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Read more... | Download PDF...

24 May 2009,  Hay Festival,  guardian.co.uk   AUDIO 10:58 min

Henry Porter's speech at the Hay Festival's Guardian Debate: 'Does the Left still care anout Liberty?'

Listen at guardian.co.uk... | Download mp3...

March 3, 2009,  Cory Doctorow,  Boing Boing

Still think that if you're innocent, you have nothing to fear from surveillance and control laws? Have a look at this news-video about Stephen Clarke, a man who was accused of taking pictures of sewer-gratings in Manchester and arrested. Though the police couldn't find any photos of sewer-gratings on his phone (and even though "what a sewer grating looks like" isn't a piece of specialized terrorist intelligence), he was held on suspicion of planning an act of terror, imprisoned for two days while the police searched his home, his phone and his computer...

Read more... |  Watch video...

February 28 2009, Convention on Modern Liberty  TRANSCRIPT • VIDEO 12:23 min

Watch Lord Bingham's informative and powerful speech to the Convention on Modern Liberty on 28 February 2009 at the Institute of Education in London.

Watch at guardian.co.uk | watch at CML website | Read the transcript...

November 3 2008, David Davis,  guardian.co.uk

As the PM admits that the government cannot guarantee data security, going ahead with ID cards means he's lost the plot too

Read more...

28th October 2008, By John Ozimek, The Register

Terror Laws due to be passed this autumn, could provide Police with a new and significant power to stop individuals taking photographs.

Read more...

October 26, 2008, Simon Jenkins, The Sunday Times

Is Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, a pocket dictator? Is there no drop of liberalism in her veins, no concept of personal freedom, no fear of a repressive state? 

Read more...

October 22 2008, Iain Sinclair,  The Guardian

A warning to any innocent Hackney writer: question the coming triumph of the 2012 Olympics and, like me, you could achieve the dubious glamour of becoming a banned author.

Read more...

Tuesday, July 1 2008,  Our Kingdom

A leading Conservative politician in Britain and former shadow home secretary has broken ranks with the political and media establishment to launch a campaign linking government plans to extend the time suspects can be held without charge to a wider erosion of rights and liberties. In a sweeping essay, openDemocracy's founder Anthony Barnett assesses what is at stake and sees this moment as a historic test of democratic commitment for liberals and radicals.

Read more...

Thursday, 3 July 2008, Church House Conference Centre, London 

With Henry Porter, David Davis MP, David Aaronovitch and Denis MacShane MP. Chaired by Georgina Henry.

Listen to the audio...

Monday, June 16 2008, conservativehome.blogs.com

David Davis explains why he resigned to fight a by-election on civil liberty issues, and calls for your support in his campaign.

Read more...

Thursday, June 12 2008, guardian.co.uk

This is the text of the speech delivered by the shadow home secretary, announcing his resignation as an MP over 42-day detention.

Read more...

Wednesday, June 11 2008, 09:09am, Radio Five Live

Victoria Derbyshire interviews MA student Rizwaan Sabir, who was arrested and detained for six days under the Terrorism Act after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual from the US Justice Dept website for use in academic research.

Listen to the interview...

June 8, 2008, The Sunday Times

Every week government departments and other authorities are finding new ways to spy on us - and passing around even our most personal details, warns Jill Kirby.

Read more...

June 4, 2008, Centre for Policy Studies & Microsoft

A seminar hosted by the CPS and Microsoft. Chaired by Simon Jenkins with panel members Nick Herbert MP, Henry Porter, Simon Davies, Jerry Fishenden and Jill Kirby.

Listen to the audio...

January 25, 2008, Centre for Policy Studies  REPORT

The proposed introduction of ID cards for British citizens in 2011 represents only the tip of an iceberg of personal information which the Government is collecting

Read more... | Download PDF...

March 3 2008, UK Joint Committee on Human Rights   VIDEO 1:24:41  

A British Bill of rights: Henry Porter, Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke QC MP and Professor Vernon Bogdanor give evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Watch the video... | Read Henry Porter's Submission to the JCHR...

December 28, 2007, Centre for Policy Studies

Politicians have always manipulated language, often motivated by the desire to create a sense of activity and purpose and thereby to justify their existence. And the language of bureaucracy has long provided a convenient disguise for government action, or inaction. But New Labour has taken this disguise to new heights.

Read more... | Download PDF...

Monday, 24 December 2007, 7.50 am, BBC Radio 4, Today Programme

Errant fathers who refuse to take financial responsibility for their children will have their passports confiscated - that's if the new Child Maintenance Bill, currently going through parliament, reaches the statute book. Lord Lyell is interviewed 

Listen with Real Player...

Wednesday, 19 December 2007, 8.37 am, BBC Radio 4, Today Programme

Where does the balance fall between civil liberties and the security of the nation? John Humphrys talks to Henry Porter and Polly Toynbee

Listen with Real Player...

Monday, 17 December 2007, The Guardian

I am a solicitor with more than 20 years' involvement in the legal aid sector. What has happened under Labour is no less than a sustained attack on an independent legal aid system that was founded by Labour 60 years ago.

Read more...

Friday, 7 December 2007, The Guardian

PCs have a multitude of uses, but, as a string of recent scandals illustrate, private information storage is not one of them 

Read more...

Thursday, 6 December 2007, 7.50 am, BBC Radio 4, Today Programme

Brighton and Hove City Council is considering a proposal to stop anti-gay lyrics being sung by rappers in the town's pubs and clubs. Henry Porter and Simon Fanshaw are interviewed.

Listen with Real Player...

Tuesday, 27 November 2007, The Guardian

Last week's loss of confidential child benefit records has been a wake-up call to 25 million people about the reality of the government's handling of our personal information. But few realise the extent of what lies ahead 

Read more...

Tuesday, 27 November 2007, The Daily Telegraph

Gordon Brown used to be known as the Macavity of politics, who was never at the scene of the crime when things went wrong. Now he is in danger of turning into TS Eliot's other feline creations, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, who get the blame for every misfortune that occurs, whether or not it is their fault.

Read more...

Saturday, 24 November 2007, The Guardian

So will biometrics prevent ID theft? Well, it might make it more difficult for you to prove your innocence. And once your fingerprints are stolen, they are harder to replace than your pin number. 

Read more...

Wednesday, 21 November 2007, The Guardian

The blithe trust in the benign power of the state is astonishing - and in Fortress Britain, it is plainly undeserved 

Read more...

Wednesday, 21 November 2007, The Spectator

The 28 days debate is a red herring compared to this attack on free speech 

Read more...

Monday, 19 November 2007, Today Programme, BBC Radio 4

Henry Porter and Matthew D'Ancona interviewed for Radio 4's Today Programme.

Listen with Real Player...

Sunday, 18 November 2007, The Sunday Times

Britain is not a police state but a nation with police state tendencies. In any democracy the dictates of freedom wrestle with those of security. Britons are a liberal people who want to be safe. Do they also want to live in a condition of perpetual paranoia? 

Read more...

Saturday,17 November 2007, The Daily Mail

I've thought for years that I would end up in jail for some offence against political correctness. I have almost got used to the idea of spending my declining years writing love-letters for skinhead thugs, eating slop with plastic cutlery and pushing the library trolley from cell to cell.

Read more...

Saturday, 17 November 2007, The Times

We face overzealous security in our daily lives, and are governed by a Prime Minister in a flap 

Read more...

Thursday, 15 November 2007, The Guardian

Britain is now one of the world's most spied-upon societies, where such ancient rights as habeas corpus are hacked to bits 

Read more...

Thursday, 15 November 2007, The Daily Mail

As if it's not difficult enough to get through our airports already, foreign travel is about to get even more exasperating 

Read more...

Sunday, 11 November 2007, New York Times

In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite...

Read more...

Monday, 12 November 2007, The Telegraph

On the issue of ID cards, I would find myself in the dock with, among many others, Shirley Williams, Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne, three leading Liberal Democrats who have said they will refuse to co-operate with the scheme because it is an unwarranted infringement of liberty.

Read more...

Monday, 6 November 2007, The Guardian CiF

We are already a over-surveilled society: new measures to add microphones to CCTV cameras are a quantum step in the wrong direction 

Read more...

Monday, 29 October 2007, The Guardian

The real test of whether the prime minister is a sincere defender of civil liberties remains ID cards 

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Sunday, 21 October 2007, The Times

How much did you drink last week? In Harrogate 26.4% of you had between 12 and 17 “large” glasses of wine (depending on your sex), in Mole Valley 25.5% of you did, and in Leeds 25.3%. Don’t ask me how the government knows this. It apparently wants to “target middle-class drinkers”. Public money must be squandered, so why not measure the nation’s drinking habits? 

Read more...

Friday, 19 October 2007, The Telegraph

Oppositions challenge power, governments hoard it. Pre-1997, Labour proclaimed its commitment to civil liberties. ... The issue of liberty cuts across all parties. Labour's steady path to authoritarianism is a matter of shame for anyone such as myself. It also presents a tailor-made opportunity for its political opponents, one that they should have the courage to pursue.  

Read more...

Friday, 19 October 2007, Talking with Tatchell, 18 Doughty Street.com

Wednesday, 27 September 2007, Daily Mail

Today, the growth of the State intrudes everywhere upon our lives and our liberties. We must set boundaries now, or our ancient freedoms - the very things which define us as British - will be lost for ever. 

Read more...

18 January 2007,  By Simon Moores, Silicon.com

As government once again considers building a 'super database' linking all our personal details, Simon Moores explains why, though he doesn't oppose the idea in theory, he's uneasy about it in practice.

Read more...

23 March 2006, London Review of Books

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. 

Read more...