Sent to my MP today:

Dear Julian Brazier,

My apologies for taking up yet more of your time, however our
Government seem to be leaving me little choice but to do so. I wish to
draw your attention to a story breaking in the Daily Telegraph today
(Saturday 14th March, 2009) regarding so called “e-borders”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4987415/All-travel-plans-to-be-tracked-by-Government.html

This would seem to be, if accurate (and I can find no cited references
to active or pending legislation), a HUGE step into the surveillance
culture which campaigns such as NO2ID are opposing and trying to publicise.

I don’t know if it is “too late” to do anything about this but, even if
it is, I would ask why this is necessary (to fight international
terrorism?!) and how it will help… surely the checking of persons on
“watch lists” can be done without the need for such a tracking database
of the general public at point of entry/exit.

What will be next? Will travelling outside your county (or perhaps into
London on a “sensitive” day) require written permission from a
bureaucrat before you’re allowed on a train?

This yet another appalling regime being apparently pushed in sideways
hoping law abiding citizens will roll-over and take it without any
question. I don’t have anything to hide about my whereabouts, but I
find the whole idea of registering my movements with an agency and
having that retained for a decade disgusting.

Once again, I’m sorry to have taken up your time but this is an issue
which is often overlooked and needs more attention.

Yours sincerely,
Me

He’s usually quite good about replying to emails so I will await the response…

I’ve set up a webalbum for you to oggle

Below is the petition text, I encourage you to read and, if you so wish, sign your name here.

Digital Rights Managment (DRM) is a technology by which content distributors can dictate what consumers can do with their content to the extent that, for example, the PC that you own at home hides things from you, refuses to do something because it thinks you’re trying to “tamper” with it, and potentially notifies the content distributor of this action.

Currently, Microsoft Windows Vista is pushing this technology on users with various hardware manufacturers complicit in it including Intel, ATI, NVidia, S3 and Matrox.

This petition asks parliament to make it illegal for software to actively disallow and subvert the operators intention even if it “thinks” that it “might” be illegal — hardware is owned by the consumer and should remain such in the same way as cars do not disallow a driver to break the 70mph speed limit on UK roads.

From the little I’ve read, the powers vested in the FBI allow the law enforcement personnel in the Democratic Republic of the Free Peoples of the United States of America [1] to, with the oversight of the independent judiciary, can activate on your broadband provider, mobile carrier, university network account a wire tap allowing them to log all communication you make or receive including email, phone conversations (VoIP included), what websites you visit. This officially scares me.

I sincerely hope that, should this get implemented in the United Kingdom, then it gets tested in court against the Human Rights Act and stricken from the statute book like it would deserve. There is no way that this sort of activity is the way a democratic country should treat its citizens who are, after all, innocent until proven guilty [2].

As for readers in the DRotFPoUSA, I suggest you find out how to use PGP for all your email find out what ssh and something like TOR can do for you if only to show them that those who need to get around such privacy infractions are quite capable of doing so with little/no effort.

This does assume that the FBI don’t have backdoors in the SSL/PGP/TOR system already…

Notes

1. Well, you have the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea… is it any of that? There’s a relevant line from Yes, Minister! talking about laws they don’t want to implement along the lines of “Always dispense with the tricky issues in the title”
2. That’s how it is supposed to work, anyway

Please participate in this and get some of the rediculous laws that have been passed recently by government taken back off the statute books.

Some of the laws you may wish to consider are:

• Terrorism Act 2000
• Sections 132-135 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005
• Identity Cards Act 2006

On the government’s own website it says that our rights include:

• freedom of expression
• freedom of assembly and association

So, freedom of expression… is that not being permitted to express your opinion in a public forum even if others may disagree with you? The UN have decreed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that:

Everyone has the right to opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

The UN regard things like war propaganda, incitement to violence and certain forms of hate speech as outside the remit of freedom of expression.

With regards to freedom of assembly and association, Wikipedia states that [ref]:

Freedom of assembly is the freedom to associate with, or organize any groups, gatherings, clubs, or organizations that one wishes. It is held to be a key right in liberal democracies, where by citizens may form or join any political party, special interest group, or union without government restrictions. In legal systems without freedom of assembly, certain political parties or groups can be banned with harsh penalties for any members. Public protests against the government are usually banned as well.

In 2005, the people of the United Kingdom were restricted from demonstrating in the vicinity of Parliament by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. This act requires anyone wishing to demonstrate within a half mile of Parliament to get authorisation to do so. The main reason for this piece of legislation being a single man demonstrating against the war in Iraq, Brian Haw, which some members of the government have found to be distasteful.

Is this the sort of thing an elected body of MPs should be doing? Restricting the people’s ability to let them know, in times of civil unrest, what their views are? Should we allow them, once they’ve been elected, to shut themselves away from the nasty world outside and silence those who hold and wish to express conflicting views.

As a nation we have, in the past, condemned regimes which have limited the freedoms of people in this way. Is this, in fact, the same sort of regime we wish to be governed by?

I don’t.

Both of these cases have involved a highly trained officer driving a new car on an M class road at night very fast (in excess of 150mph).

Road traffic groups today condemned the absolute discharge of PCD Mark Milton from the West Mercia force who received a conviction for dangerous driving while accustomising himself with a new vehicle. They have suggested it would have been more appropriate for him to have used a race track to do such testing.

I have every sympathy for the officers in question here. They have limited time to get to know new cars, are very highly trained in safe, fast driving, and may be called upon later that night to, for example, chase a stolen car down a motorway. If we do not support our officers in doing their jobs, how are we able to complain when they can’t do them?

I read that the police force in question are going to appeal the judgement. I hope that, although the officer may have broken the letter of the law, the judges overseeing the appeal will understand the difficult situations that we put our police officers in and overturn the guilty verdict or are we to further tie the hands of the people who protect us?