This is the question asked by Anthony Daniels over on the Social Affairs Units blog. His article conveys the sense of mounting unease that I certainly share. Read the whole thing.
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The land of the free is imposing privacy-busting requirements on its visitors.
There are so many concerns that one does not know where to start:
So we have unencrypted details about an individual, recorded in by an unreliable manner (biometrics). That’s what I call the worst of both worlds…
And far more unpleasant as you already will be ‘guilty’ of not having your non-papers in order. The scariest problem of all is the remote-readability of the chip, which combined with unencrypted data on it, make it designed for clandestine remote reading. Deliberately.
Privacy and liberty implications of this are enourmous… and it gets worse. Identity theft will become a matter of setting up such clandestine remote readings. Terrorists will be able to know the nationality of those they attack. Even the authorities realised that this would be double-plus-ungood and are looking for ways to ‘protect’ the chip either by blocking radio waves with a Faraday cage or an electronic lock. As a result, some countries may need special equipment or software to read an EU passport, which undermines the ideal of a global, interoperable standard. And so we come the full joyous circle of government ‘compentence’… February 19th, 2005 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
 … is also sauce for the gander, so the old saying goes. The preposterous EU proposal to extend the ban the symbols of the German Worker’s National Socialist Party that is already law in France, Germany and elsewhere, has prompted a move to also ban communist and socialist symbols. So now let us also ban Imperial Roman symbols (they were a slave owning political system), Christian symbols (Inquisitions, religious wars and sundry other nastiness), Confederate Flags… oh hell, let’s just ban all symbols except the ‘peace symbol’ and the EU symbol. 
Via Rex Curry. February 7th, 2005 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
The cover of print version of The Economist is titled ‘Taking Britain’s Liberties’ and the issue discusses many of the very serious abridgements of our civil rights that have recently taken place.  But rather than link to any specific article, what interests me is that the truly grave situation is finally ‘front page news’ in a fairly mainstream publication. It is nothing less than amazing that it has taken this long for the seriousness of the situation to reach the collective editorial consciousness of any significant element of the media outside the blogosphere and other elements of the activist fringe. February 7th, 2005 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Although Samizdata concerns itself with more important things than mere politics (thankfully for our collective sanity), it seems wrong that we should pass let without record the government’s announcement of its intention to introduce indefinite executive detention for UK citizens. For those who missed the vigourous Parliamentary debate (which must have lasted at least 15 minutes), in future anyone may be locked up indefinitely in their own home on the say-so of the Home Secretary, based on evidence known only to him. The Daily Telegraph appears to blame the Human Rights Act, noting that this decision is ostensibly being taken because the Law Lords said that it was illegal to empower the Home Secretary only to detain foreigners arbitrarily. This view is advanced notwithstanding Lord Hoffman’s ditcta that applying such a equally rule to British citizens is no more defensible. But it is an absurd idea that such unlimited arbitrary power of arrest and detention is something the government reluctantly finds has been thrust upon it. On the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I am tempted to wonder about the timing. Is this just a good day to bury bad news? Is it some kind of sick joke? Is the government double-daring libertarians to announce the beginning of the police state on the day we remember the ghastly outcome of arbitrary rule? Whatever the truth, it is a black day. January 27th, 2005 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Countryside Alliance continues its quixotic fight to use the approved levers of power to overturn the ban on hunting with hounds. Somehow the realisation that there is nothing at all ‘undemocratic’ about the fact they are being oppressed by the state has still not percolated through those worthy but rather thick country skulls.
But why not? If Mr. Jackson believes that what is being done to him by Parliament is unjust, then why not challenge the supremacy of Parliament? There is nothing sacred about a bunch of lawmakers and a law is only as good as its enforcement. If the Countryside Alliance actually have the courage of their convictions, they must start challenging the right of the state to do whatever it wishes just because its ruling party has a majority in Parliament. Maybe if they realised that they are a minority and will always be a minority they would be less inclined to trust the old way of doing things. There is a long history of civil disobedience to duly constituted authority in the defence of what is right. That matters far more that what is or is not legal. January 25th, 2005 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
Regular readers of this blog will know that the student newspaper at the University of St Andrews was evicted by the student union after it fell foul of the union’s “Equal Opportunities Policy”. One of the principal student union officials responsible for the ban says that he is just trying to help students:
Believe it or not, this virtuous student censor’s job title in the union is “SS Officer”. January 24th, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today is the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 1916 that income tax is a violation of the Constitution. So the politicians had to change to Constitution. January 24th, 2005 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Guardian reports today on an announcement from Tom Ridge, to the effect that a quick fix has been put in place by the US government to allow low risk passengers to get on and off their airplane’s more quickly:
The Guardian complains only about how it is Schiphol that is getting the benefit of the new arrangements, rather than Heathrow, making the story a hook for another cheap gibe about American geography knowledge. This is a perfect example of the way the world now works. This register is voluntary, but the process is now well in hand to enable the authorities everywhere in due course to demand such information from everyone, as a condition of international travel. How long before it starts being claimed that an unwillingness to register is an admission that one is a high risk flyer? If you doubt this, read the rest of the story:
Precisely. We are rapidly entering a world in which the world’s various Big Brothers know our every move. Our best hope will be that, on the whole, Big Brother does not care. January 14th, 2005 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
If we can have an ‘absurdity of lawmakers’, I suppose we can have a ‘stupidity of doctors’. In the face of attempts to deregulate drinking in Britain, a nation which is unusually restrictive when it comes alcohol compared to most western nations, we have Prof Ian Gilmore, a spokesman for the Royal College of Physicians (an extreme statist professional organisation and political lobby) saying:
However he does not explain why digging the same hole deeper will make things better, given that Britain is already far more regulated than France and also has more serious alcohol related problems. Like most regulatory authoritarians, Gilmore and the RCP simply do not have either the imagination to think that perhaps the over-regulation caused the problem, nor do they have the socialisation to have the notion occur to them that imposing their views on others is immoral. If people get drunk and commit crimes, punish the criminals, not those who drink and do not commit crimes. And in any case, the true criminals are those who added times limits to drinking hours which more or less institutionalised binge drinking. 
The political class at work January 3rd, 2005 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
Of all the criticisms of the War on Terror (and there are many legitimate ones), at least there appears to be no intention on the part of the prosecutors to deliberately target children. Alas, the same cannot be said for the War on Drugs:
Oh but why settle for all these namby-pamby, milquetoast, half-measures? There is only one sure way to stop children taking drugs: kill them. Yes, that’s it! Kill the little bastards. Think of all the valuable police and court time it will save, not to mention precious and overstretched NHS resources. Kill them all now. You know it makes sense. If it saves just one child from a life on drugs it’s worth it. It’s for their own good. It’s called ‘tough love’…etc…etc… (adding shopworn cliches infinitum). December 30th, 2004 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Michael Howard’s Conservative Party is planning a U-turn over identity cards – but not until after the General Election. According to a senior Conservative Party MP, the plan is to support ID cards at present in order to look tough on law and order, but they will drop support on ‘practical grounds’ when public opinion edges away. Cynically, Michael Howard’s office has already drawn up plans to flip-flop in the summer. I believe this is called ‘conviction politics’. December 22nd, 2004 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
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