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September 2010, Manifesto Club REPORT
With the coalition government planning tougher penalties for under-age serving, our new report finds that 'Think 25' policies are already penalising thousands of innocent adults. 28 ¾: How Constant Age Checks Are Infantilising Adults, by Dolan Cummings, finds that adults in their late 20s and 30s are being hassled by constant ID checks – and that the new rules will make this problem worse. The report is based on our survey of people's ID check experiences, and argues for the abolition of 'Think 25' policies and other over-cautious age-check rules.
Read more... | Download the full report (pdf)
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27 August 2010, By Brian Wheeler Political reporter, BBC News
The return of the architect of transformational government, Ian
Watmore, to the heart of government is seen by civil liberties
campaigners as a sign that transformational government could be about
to make a comeback - even though the Cabinet Office insists data
sharing is not part of his remit and there is a government-wide freeze
on new IT spending.
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20 August 2010, Wayne Martin, Liberty Central, guardian.co.uk
The issue of forced contraception raises difficult questions about autonomous decision making under the Mental Capacity Act
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8 July 2010, Josie Appleton, Spiked
The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act is based on a poisonous assumption: that every adult is a potential abuser unless state-approved.
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Sunday 27 June 2010, 7.30pm, Agitpop, North Cotswold Community Radio
Henry Porter is interviewed for NCCR's pop and politics show. Scroll down to 'Listen Again - AgitPop - Henry Porter' to hear the two hour show.
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8 July 2010, Abelinda Blackbird, Indymedia
Recently in Camberwell various CCTV smart cars have been patrolling residential areas under the publicly known purpose of traffic enforcement. A group of activists who had recently moved to the area observed the Southwark council spy cars recording number plates of all cars passing through their vicinity as well as recording the movements of the local residents and taking footage of people’s houses. This considerable infringement on civil liberties was quite enough for the activists to stand so they went their merry way out onto the streets with their two banners, one reading ‘CCTV free zone’ and another reading ‘freedom not filming’.
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7 July 2010, Tim Kevan, guardian.co.uk
Just when we had a glimmer of hope on civil liberties, the home
secretary, Theresa May, announces that the government will seek to
renew the 28-day detention period without charge pending a review of
counter-terrorism legislation. The coalition has had no difficulty
reversing plenty of the last government's spending pledges and even,
let's face it, details such as the tax on cider. But when it comes to
something as profound as our very liberty then it's more of the same.
May said the measure allowing terror suspects to be held for 28 days
before charge should be temporarily renewed for six months. She could
very easily have let it revert to its previous length of 14 days, which
even then would have left us with the longest period of such detention
in the western world.
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3 July 2010, Emily Apple, guardian.co.uk
It has been a week of exposures and embarrassments for the police, revealing the extent of their arrogance towards calls for change. On Friday, the Guardian revealed how the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, one of three domestic extremism units, had logged the Catts – peaceful protesters against the EDO MBM Technology arms factory in Brighton – more than 80 times, including detailing their appearance and slogans on their T-shirts. Further to this, Criminal Intelligence Reports (CRIMINTs) disclosed to Fitwatch, during an appeal against conviction for blocking police cameras, show how the Metropolitan police public order unit, CO11, documented the details of speakers, including MP Jeremy Corbyn, at a legal demonstration against the BBC's refusal to air the Gaza appeal in January 2009. Another speaker noted is the interfaith adviser to Nick Clegg, Fiyaz Mughal, who is also his adviser on extremism – you couldn't make it up.
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2 July 2010, Charter97.org
Britain’s theatre community comes out against oppression and censorship in the “last dictatorship of Europe”. Sir Tom Stoppard and actor/director Sam West Has led a protest of high-profile theatre practitioners outside the Belarussian Embassy at 6 Kensington Court, London, W8 5DL on Thursday 1st July at 11.30am. They presentes an open letter to President Alyaksander Lukashenko of Belarus calling for greater democratic freedom and for an end to censorship of the Internet. Other signatories include Mark Ravenhill, Howard Brenton, Alan Rickman, Laura Wade, Caryl Churchill, Henry Goodman, Henry Porter, Simon McBurney, Simon Stephens and Lyndsey Turner.
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20 June 2010, The Observer
That last week's alleged assault on 42 Iraqi men on a plane from Heathrow to Baghdad went largely unreported is a disgrace
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June 14, 2010, By Natalie Ram and Michael Seringhaus, Slate
The U.S. forensic DNA database has expanded rapidly in recent years. While it was originally authorized to store the DNA profiles of only convicted violent felons, the FBI Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) now includes all federal offenders—including arrestees not yet convicted of any crime—as well as convicts from all 50 states and arrestees from many. Such expansions of the database are troubling, but at least they are explicit. More worrisome is the effective inclusion of many innocent individuals in the database, via novel and almost completely unregulated search techniques called "partial matching" and "familial searching." By adopting one or both of these search techniques, some states are quietly expanding database coverage to "virtually" include the innocent relatives of profiled offenders—nearly always without any legislative oversight.
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9 June 2010, Damian Green, guardian.co.uk
When the second reading of the Identity Documents bill takes place in the House of Commons later today, the coalition government will meet its commitment to scrap the ID card scheme.This bill is the first step the government will take to reduce control by the state and hand power pack to the people. It is not the job of government to collect and store vast amounts of biographical and biometric data belonging to innocent people.
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June 4, 2010, Tony Collins's IT Projects blog, Computer Weekly
In a Parliamentary answer yesterday, the new minister for NHS IT, Conservative MP Simon Burns, appears to confirm that there will be little change to the Summary Care Records scheme.
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4 June 2010, Alex Deane, Big Brother Watch
The Government has announced that it will continue building the Summary Care Record database of our medical data. This contradicts the Conservative position outlined last year: 'A Conservative government would "dismantle" central NHS IT infrastructure, halt and renegotiate NPfIT local service provider contracts and introduce interoperable local systems.' It also contradicts the Liberal Democrat position outlined this year, when Norman Lamb, then Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said: "The Government needs to end its obsession with massive central databases. The NHS IT scheme has been a disastrous waste of money and the national programme should be abandoned."
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14 May 2010, Josie Appleton, guardian.co.uk
Challenging the culture of routine checks on British citizens' identities is as crucial as taking on the ID card scheme
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14 May 2010, Manifesto Club SURVEY
The age for ID-checking customers creeps upwards, with people in their late twenties and thirties now frequently checked. Have you been ID checked for buying alcohol, fireworks or bleach? If so, we want to know about it. Fill in this Manifesto Club survey and tell us about your case.
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May 10, 2010, Tony Collins, IT Projects Blog
In 2008 Elizabeth Dove (a pseudonym) saw her GP to ask what could be done about her depression. Some time later Dove had a dispute with her local council, a matter entirely unrelated to her health. Pursuing her complaint to the Isle of Wight council, she submitted a request under the Data Protection Act to be sent all the information the authority held on her. To her dismay, she received sensitive data from her GP health records. It came from officials at the local council's housing department - with whom she had the dispute. It turns out that her health data was held on a joint council and primary care trust system "Swift". She hadn't consented to her health records being shared with the local council...
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28 April 2010, Andrew Blick, Our Kingdom
While we are distracted by the General Election, the people who remain in power regardless of the outcome - the Civil Service - are busy drafting our constitution for us; and we have not been invited to participate.
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Sunday 18 April 2010, The Observer
The authors of section 44 of the 2000 Prevention of Terrorism Act did not intend to mandate the systematic harassment of photographers. The law gives police the power to stop and search people, without suspicion of criminal intention, in any area considered a possible target for terrorist attack. Since al-Qaida targets civilians, an area vulnerable to attack can plausibly be defined as a place where people gather. Predictably, that interpretation is the one police seem to prefer when using their power.
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16 April 2010, Cory Doctorow, guardian.co.uk
Baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell
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April 14 2010, By Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOm.com
The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice says it will use predictive analytics software from IBM to foretell which of its juvenile offenders are likely to return to crime. The UK Ministry of Justice also uses IBM’s predictive software on its criminal population, to see which ones pose a greater threat to public safety upon release. IBM clearly plans to take SPSS beyond its former domain of market researchers and scientists and apply it to where the big money is — homeland security in these frightening times.
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14 April 2010, NUJ London Photographers' Branch
Listen to the audio of last night's rally at the Friends meeting House in London. The panel, chaired by London Photographers’ Branch chair Jess Hurd, included lawyer Chez Cotton, photojournalist and PHNAT organiser Marc Vallee, civil liberties columnist Henry Porter, photographer Pennie Quinton, NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear and law academic Keith Ewing.
Read more... | Download mp3
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14 April 2010, Marc Vallée, guardian.co.uk
Last night I was one of the speakers at Hostile Reconnaissance – Terror Laws, Civil Liberties and Press Freedom, a rally organised by the London photographers' branch of the National Union of Journalists.
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14 April 2010, Anthony Barnett, guardian.co.uk
Hang 'em is just one campaign seeking to make constitutional change from below. We want our country and democracy back
Read more... | Hang 'em website
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13 April 2010, Clare Sambrook, Our Kingdom
At the bustling Counter Terror Expo in London’s Olympia this week they are giving top billing to the security industry’s favourite politician. ‘The most experienced cabinet minister of modern times’, they call him: Dr John Reid. Home office colleagues say Reid — Labour hard man, former secretary of state for health and defence, and home secretary — is the minister who brought business in from the cold. These days relations are warm and cosy. Marketing their wares as vital to the war on terror, while dreaming up everyday applications for intrusive high security kit, Reid’s friends have quietly advanced deep into the public sector — running schools, GP clinics and police investigations. Out of government but still a serving MP, Reid has been taking £50,000 a year from G4S — the Group 4 Securicor giant.
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13 April 2010, Sarah Irving, The Electronic Intifada
"We are very angry, very afraid, very sad, very upset. My wife, she is depressed. When she sees police in the street she's very frightened. They destroyed our life," says Badi Tebani. In January 2009, Tebani's teenage son Yahia was one of tens of thousands of people who joined demonstrations in London against the Israeli bombing of Gaza. At one of those demonstrations Yahia and many others were "kettled" -- surrounded by a police cordon and slowly let out in return for giving their names and addresses and for being filmed. hat was the last Yahia knew of it until the following April, when the family home was raided by 20 to 30 police at 5am. The front door was forced open and Badi Tebani and his family were ordered to lie on the floor
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9 April 2010, By Rich Trenholm, CNET
The Digital Economy Bill has a number of clauses that, if taken to their logical extremes, could see some pretty horrible outcomes. It's completed its whistle-stop tour of the legislative process, sprinting from Commons to Lords with barely a pause for breath before getting the nod from Her Maj. MPs decided to get the bill into law first and worry about the details later. Until Ofcom hammers out the mechanics of the processes outlined in the bill, it's impossible to say how we'll be affected. We take a look at some of the worst-case scenarios.
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26th March 2010, By John Ozimek • The Register
Home Office jubilation over the "success" of its sex offender disclosure scheme may be premature amid yet more evidence of the Home Office twisting research to suit its own agenda. That is the conclusion of sharp-eyed blogger, Hawktalk, who also questioned whether the way the scheme works in practice might create problems for wholly innocent individuals through the creation of misleading audit trails and over-zealous public officials applying the rule that "there’s no smoke without fire".
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25 March 2010, Big Brother Watch REPORT
New research conducted by Big Brother Watch reveals that there are at least 100,000 non-medical personnel in NHS Trusts across the country with access to confidential medical records. The report - Broken Records - is an analysis of the status of confidential medical records in the UK, the security around access to sensitive personal information and how the Government’s NPfIT and the Conservatives' private sector proposals could change the current situation for the worse.
Read more... | Download the report [pdf]...
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March 25, 2010, David Pannick QC, The Times
Few British politicians are interested in the constitution. They are much more concerned with how to achieve, or retain, power, and what to do with it, than with imposing limits on government. The Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which received its second reading in the House of Lords yesterday, confirms that this Government does not understand constitutional norms. Parliament should reject any attempt to force any parts of this Bill through without proper scrutiny.
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25 March 2010, Joint Committee on Human Rights
The Government states that "the protection of human rights is a key principle underpinning all the Government's counter-terrorism work." However, all too often human rights considerations are squeezed out by the imperatives of national security and public safety. Since September 11th 2001 the Government has continuously justified many of its counterterrorism measures on the basis that there is a public emergency threatening the life of the nation. We question whether the country has been in such a state for more than eight years. This permanent state of emergency inevitably has a deleterious effect on public debate about the justification for counter-terrorism measures.
Download report [pdf]...
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25 March 2010, Home Office
The report provides the figures on the reported and recorded use of taser by police forces in England and Wales.
Read more... | Download PDF...
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25th March 2010, By Stephen Glover, Daily Mail
A group of the country's most eminent doctors is calling for a ban on smoking in cars and in public places where young people congregate, such as parks. They trot out an impressive sounding array of statistics about medical problems in children which they say result from 'passive smoking'.
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March 24th, 2010, By Philip Johnston, Telegraph
Twenty of Britain’s most senior doctors have called for a ban on smoking in cars as part of a sweeping expansion of laws to protect children against the effects of inhaling smoke. Why stop there? Will there be a ban on smoking in homes next? When one of the doctors was asked this question he said that would be a bit too extreme because it could not be policed. In other words, he had no objection to the state’s invasion of private property, merely that it would be a difficult law to uphold. This has gone too far.
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23 March 2010, Dylan Sharpe, Big Brother Watch
Whilst my walk home from work takes me past the Home Office and countless CCTV cameras, it is not often that one returns home to find the Big Brother state staring up from the doormat. Yet, that is exactly what happened last night when I stepped inside my front door and found the 'Westminster Lifestyle Survey' waiting patiently for my return. The stated purpose of the document is to 'paint a clearer picture of the daily lives of our local community' which, although intrusive, could be seen as having some utility in terms of local service provision. But it is hard not to be shocked by the intrusiveness of some of the questions.
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March 22 2010, Toby Stevens, Privacy, Identity & Consent Blog, Computer Weekly
A very unpleasant little amendment to the Licensing Act (2003) is in front of Ministers for approval as a Statutory Instrument (SI). This ridiculous SI, which is another back-door attempt to undermine civil liberties and bolster the National ID Service, will pass on 6 April unless it is sent back by Parliament.
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19 March 2010, Clare Sambrook, Our Kingdom
Home Office minister Meg Hillier took a leap into la la land on today’s BBC Daily Politics Programme, claiming that if the government stopped locking up asylum seekers and their children, then the price of trafficked children would rise, putting more children at risk of trafficking. I am not making this up.
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19 Mar 2010, By Philip Johnston, Telegraph
This nanny-state government's legislative tinkering leaves no one better off, says Philip Johnston in an extract from his new book
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17 March 2010, Manick Govinda, Spiked
Ludicrously strict visa rules for artists and academics from overseas are strangling cultural life in the UK.
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March 16, 2010, Nicole Kobie, IT Pro
My mum — and yours too, I’m sure — used to say this: “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” That’s not bad advice for six-year-olds, but I’d expect better from the government. Yesterday, I went to a speech delivered by identity minister Meg Hillier, who was telling attendees what’s next for the contentious and expensive programme at an event hosted by think tank the Social Market Forum...
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16 Mar 2010, By Simon Heffer, Telegraph
A danger of the Government's having made such a mess of the economy is that one risks forgetting all the other horrors for which it is responsible. Between now and the election I shall make a point of discussing some of these other factors that an intelligent voter should want to consider before casting his or her ballot. Despite stiff competition from matters like Europe, immigration, law and order and the near-destruction of our education system, one is perhaps worse than all the others: the insidious and at times quite terrifying assault on our civil liberties.
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15 Mar 2010, Progress Magazine
Home Office minister Meg Hillier argues ID cards can provide the foundation for fairer access to services and opportunities
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15 March 2010, Alex Deane, Big Brother Watch
... or so this advertisement for the Anti-Terrorist hotline on talkSPORT would have you believe. The 40 second advert explicitly suggests that someone who * Keeps himself to himself * Draws his curtains * and pays with cash is a potential or probable terrorist. The advert is 40 seconds long and is a must-listen.
Read more... | Listen to the ad...
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12.03.10, Stephen Robinson, This is London
My mother is not ready to confess at this early stage. In the manner of an American politician up before a federal grand jury, her settled position is that she has “no recollection” of committing the offence for which she is now under surveillance. For my part, I had no idea of her alleged criminal tendencies until last week, when, in a state of baffled anxiety, she forwarded me a menacing little communication she had received from the City of Westminster.
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2 March 2010, Allen Green, The Lawyer
An apparent bomb hoax should be taken seriously. But the charging and prosecution of Paul Chambers for making an ill-conceived joke on Twitter raises serious issues for anyone interested in social media and the role of criminal law; for Paul Chambers was not charged or prosecuted – at least not directly - for making a bomb hoax at all. And what he was charged and prosecuted for suggests that a significant injustice may be occurring, and which may occur again for other bloggers, twitterers, commenters, and other users of the internet. Indeed, it may affect anyone who sends an email, even if there is a delivery failure.
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February 2010, Terri Dowty and Dr Ian Brown, ARCH
This report focuses on the way in which the data of Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children is handled, and whether information-sharing practices conform to data protection and human rights requirements. The first section considers current practice and the law; the second examines the systems and processes used to support information storage and sharing. When we began our research, we assumed that it would chiefly be about IT systems and processes. At that early stage we had not appreciated the high level of concern amongst local authority staff and refugee organisations about the way in which children’s sensitive data may be shared, both between agencies and with central government, and in particular the scale of the controversy surrounding the process of assessing a child’s age. The handling of the extensive personal information gathered during this process undoubtedly raises many issues for children’s privacy and data protection rights.
Read more... | Download the report (pdf)
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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...
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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.
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February 15th, 2010, By Andrew M Brown, Telegraph
This afternoon I was assumed to be a paedophile – not for that long, but still it was an uncomfortable sensation. I was sitting next to my wife in the audience at the Young Vic theatre, waiting to watch the National Theatre production of The Cat in the Hat. Our children were sitting on the floor in front of us.
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12 February 2010, Alex Deane, Independent
In arguing against airport body scanners, I've been met with variations on an increasingly prevalent fallacy: "if it makes us a little safer, it's worth it"; "if it saves one life, stops one crime..." What a specious argument that is.
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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...
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7 February 2010, Victoria Coren, The Observer
We were so proud of our unarmed police force. Now they're like so many Schwarzeneggers
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5 February 2010, Rizwaan Sabir, guardian.co.uk
Draconian anti-terror laws are blocking the serious study of terrorism and counter-terrorism at UK universities
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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.
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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...
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31 January 2010, Mark George QC, The Observer
A noted Manchester QC writes to Observer columnist Henry Porter in support of his campaign
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)...
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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)...
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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...
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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.
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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
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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... |
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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...
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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...
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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17 September 2009, Josie Appleton, guardian.co.uk
From nativity plays to fooball matches we must defend amateur photographers from creeping restrictions
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September 17, 2009, David Hare, The Times
A message for politicians of all parties – with your expenses comes a responsibility . . .
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 ]
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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
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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...
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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...
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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
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Wednesday, 21 November 2007, The Spectator
The 28 days debate is a red herring compared to this attack on free speech
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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...
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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?
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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...
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Saturday, 17 November 2007, The Times
We face overzealous security in our daily lives, and are governed by a Prime Minister in a flap
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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
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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
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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...
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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Friday, 19 October 2007, Talking with Tatchell, 18 Doughty Street.com
Civil liberties are being eroded on a scale unprecedented in peacetime.
In this 30 minute interview Henry Porter and Peter Tatchell discuss how
Britain's New Labour government is undermining the rights of the
individual and strengthening the power of the state.
Watch Talking with Tatchell : Labour's subversion of Liberty...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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