We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
The impulse to control everything pervades those who make up the governmental class. That is, after all, why someone decides to spend their working life in politics and applying the collective means of coercion to others. The extent to which this desire to impose force backed control can be realised is exactly what defines whether or not you are ‘free’ or a ‘slave’ of the state.
So when yesterday I read that the state plans to take DNA samples that will be retained forever, from people accused of speeding or littering or failing to wear a seatbelt, I realised that if this happens, we will have finally reached the point where the only response left to being stopped for even the most minor offence, is to run and if need be to use violence to escape, and to make no apology for that if you are caught. The offences are trivial but the prospect of being DNA sampled upon being accused of a trivial offence, and that being kept on record forever, is something worth getting violent about. Being fingerprinted is bad enough but this is intolerable.
The only thing that will stop this appalling state of affairs from coming to pass is if enough people react with outrage to this proposal.
The sooner my affairs contrive to let me get out of this godforsaken country the better.
For those here determined to hate the BBC and all its works, here is a reminder that it does do some useful things. That it isn’t quite in the mould of the fawning state broadcaster found almost everywhere in the world. Along with a reminder that some would like it to be.
This week File on 4 did the first really serious, probing investigation into HM Government’s National Identity Scheme that there has been in any media yet. You can listen to it here, and it is full of fascinating things for the attentive listener.
The most extraordinary is this testimony from IT consultant Peter Tomlinson:
The meetings were called by people in the Cabinet Office. There were topics on the agenda that were set by people in the Cabinet Office and we kept on thinking: why are we not seeing people from the Home Office.
Why are we not seeing technical people from the Home Office, or people involved in technical management? Eventually they began to come along but they never produced anyone who had any technical understanding of large-scale systems. We were just completely puzzled.
This is the first really solid public evidence I have seen that the scheme really is [or was?] intended by strategists at the highest level as a complete population management system and revolution in the nature of government, rather than being one by accident. That it is the emanation of a philosophy of government. It is it is not always good to have one’s analysis confirmed. In this case I would prefer not to have been vindicated.
Remember Philip Gould? He’s one of those high-level strategists.
This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords’ views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.
The philosophy is probably best summed up by a word from Foucault: governmentalism. Christopher Booker to the contrary, it is not a ‘mental’ creed of “The Mad Officals” but a pervasive pragmatism – using the natural history of humanity the better to shepherd it. The better shepherd is a member of the new innominate politico-bureaucratic class: maybe a civil ‘servant’, maybe a politician, maybe officially neither.
And just today a new example of the sage. A strategy memo has leaked to the Daily Mirror’s sharp political editor Kevin Maguire. Lord Gould allegedly writes:
No-one in Britain should have any doubt about what you stand for, what you want to achieve. You should position yourself as a powerful, muscular modernisation politician with the power and the determination to change Britain. You should aim to be a great reforming PM.
You have to meet this mood for change. You have to exemplify renewal and a fresh start.
Your Premiership has to have a dynamism and an energy that pulls people along in its slipstream. You must become the change that Britain needs.
There is a name for this, too. It is one of the most widely used populist techniques in world politics: Strong Man government, tribal leadership, caudillismo. A national security state, presided over by a Big Man – has “a nation of freemen, a polite and commercial people” (Blackstone), really come to that? When exactly did liberty become such a minority taste in Britain that it were possible?
[Just a footnote on the BBC below the fold.] → Continue reading: A modern Macchiavel
I missed this sharp and wise article by US columnist Jonah Goldberg a few days ago – but I had the excellent excuse of being on holiday – but his piece, which nicely sums up what is happening in Britain from a US perspective, demonstrates how some Americans are waking up to what a nannied country Britain now is. Of course, north American readers of this blog have been aware of this progressive infantilisation of the UK adult public for some time.
The question that keeps coming up, and which makes an appearance in Jonah’s article, is exactly when will the conveyor belt of nanny-state interference in our liberties stop? When, exactly, does the excrement hit the fan? Just how bullied do we have to be before something snaps?
I am still none the wiser as to whether we really know the answer to those questions.
Not only is innocent until proven guilty on the way out. The idea of limited and defined punishment for crime is too.
It appears the Sex Offenders Register which is supposed to…. well, I am not really sure what it is supposed to do, other than provide meat for the slavering tabloids, creates an ad hoc police power to get you banned from performing on TV. The BBC reports Police alert over TV contestant, in which a police spokesman says:
“There were concerns that with him being on the programme he might be seen by his victim or the victim’s family and there would be consequences from that. Lancashire Police spoke with the producers and suggested that it would not be in anyone’s interests for him to continue with the programme.”
One does not suppose the “victim or victim’s family” could remain unaware after an entirely predictable national media alert. And the consequences for the man concerned of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people who had no reason to know being told in the broadest terms he is “a sex offender” and the rest left to the mob’s squalid imagination? While ‘sexual offences’ is a broad category, from thought-crime, to bad manners, to genuinely consensual but officially barred conduct, … to the most serious violent crimes, one can be registered for any of them, even if there is no trial and no other punishment. The public obsession runs only one way, however.
A Carnegie Mellon study suggests that shoppers are willing to pay more if they are re-assured about privacy. The premium mentioned is about $0.60 (30p) on goods worth $15 (£7). This is good news. Privacy is one of the ‘goods’ with benefit distributed over time and like security you wish you had it most only when you discover you have none. Usually not in circumstances of your choosing. The heartening point about the report is that before many studies were showing that despite peoples fears about what happens to their data, they continued to surrender it in exchange for low prices.
Lorrie Cranor, director of the Usable Privacy and Security Lab at Carnegie Mellon and lead author on the study:
Our suspicion was that people care about their privacy, but that it’s often difficult for them to get information about a website’s privacy policies.
So if users are happy to pay a bit extra for re-assurances that privacy of their information is respected, perhaps they would be equally willing to use tools that give them control and ownership over that data. Of course, there are issues with that, especially with the current state of online security and lack of more flexible and selective privacy. However, there are people already looking into this so I might start holding my breath. 🙂
cross-posted from Media Influencer
Mr Clarke: Concerns about police powers have been widely expressed, particularly in regard to stop and search. I want to make it clear that the Bill, and the introduction of identity cards, will make no difference to the general powers of the police to stop people for no reason and demand proof of identity. The Bill will make no difference to the powers that exist under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. In fact, quicker, reliable access to confirmed identification would help to reduce the time a suspected person might spend in police custody. The effect of that would be to reduce the number of people wrongly held in police custody while their identity was being checked, which would be of benefit to the individual and to the police.
I also want to confirm that there is no requirement to carry an identity card at all times, as there have been many questions about that.
– Hansard, 28 June 2005
NEW anti-terrorism laws are to be pushed through before Tony Blair leaves office giving “wartime” powers to the police to stop and question people.
John Reid, the home secretary, who is also quitting next month, intends to extend Northern Ireland’s draconian police powers to interrogate individuals about who they are, where they have been and where they are going.
Under the new laws, police will not need to suspect that a crime has taken place and can use the power to gain information about “matters relevant” to terror investigations.
If suspects fail to stop or refuse to answer questions, they could be charged with a criminal offence and fined up to £5,000. Police already have the power to stop and search people but they have no right to ask for their identity and movements.
– The Sunday Times, 27 May 2007
BBC online’s heading on the latter matter was “Stop and quiz powers considered” which seems much less frightening.
“Good evening, Sir. What was the subject of the Pet Shop Boys’ 2006 single Integral?”
CNet news.com reports:
The networking giant announced late Monday that it plans to buy privately held BroadWare Technologies in an effort to bulk up its video surveillance business.
Just what we have been waiting for… with the kind of record Cisco has in China (and probably elsewhere) it is not a comfortable thought to have them helping their customers to be able to monitor, manage, record and store audio and video that can be accessed anywhere by authorized users through a Web-based interface. Especially, if some of those customers are the most oppressive regimes in the world. And even without that I would not find much enthusiasm for this particular technological advancement until individuals have some kind of recourse and defence against the jungle of surveillance cameras already in existence.
Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco’s Emerging Market Technologies Group, said in a statement:
Cisco views the video surveillance infrastructure market as an immediate high-growth opportunity that requires the ability to support both IP and analog device installations. Through the acquisition of BroadWare, Cisco will be able to address both existing and greenfield video surveillance opportunities.
How innocuous the corporate-speak phrase video surveillance opportunities sounds!
There is a reason why we keep saying here that we are not pro-business but pro-market…
Update: Mike Masnik of TechDirt has a great post Surveillance Camera Video Finding Its Way To YouTube.
This seems like a good time to second the call for some recognition of Harper’s Law: “The security and privacy risks increase proportionally to the square of the number of users of the data.” Remember that the next time the government wants to set up some large database and insists your data will be kept private.
On the BBC television news programme this morning, I glimpsed a brief and largely uncritical segment on the rollout of what are called Home Information Packs. These will be compulsory for people looking to sell their property and cost, so the BBC programme stated, about 500 pounds (a nice revenue earner for the government). The packs, or “HIPs”, will have to include details about the energy efficiency of a house and they are driven, in part, by the current focus on environmental issues. It is further evidence of how the green movement is replacing old-style socialism as a prime driver of regulation and tax.
The BBC programme profiled a number of people who have taken up the stirring job of checking people’s homes. They will inspect properties, take all manner of measurements, and generally have a wonderful time poking around the homes of would-be sellers of properties. The people on the show seemed a fairly pleasant, if faintly bland bunch – not the sort of people to get Britons irate. The image presented by the programme was all, so, British in its “what a jolly sensible idea to let people check around your home” sort of line that is bog-standard BBC these days. It was vaguely reminiscent of those old 1940s public information films shown in WW2 urging us all to cut the amount of water we use when taking a bath and to keep our gasmask with us at all times.
Tim Worstall, a blogger focusing on economic and environmental issues, has a suitably sceptical line on the need for compulsory Home Information Packs. If they are such a great idea for buyers and sellers of properties, then surely the market would react accordingly. I agree.
But leaving aside the daftness of these packs as a compulsory measure, the broader point here is how enforcement of HIPS is adding another layer of people to the public payroll. True, the HIP inspectors are not state employees, but self-employed. Even so, their jobs have been made possible by the HIP rules. This demonstrates that a lot of jobs today owe their existence to often-questionable legislation rather than consumer demand.
Remember, more than 900,000 public sector jobs have been created since 1997, at vast cost to the wealth-creating part of the economy. People are being recruited to inspect pubs and restaurants to ensure that consumers – even if they have the consent of the property owners – do not smoke. The increasing crackdown on cars in big UK cities means that traffic wardens are also a growth industry. Since 9/11, meanwhile, the security industry has expanded enormously, swelling the profit margins of firms like Kroll or Reliance. The trend is likely to continue. All this is a deadweight on the economy, even though in some cases, such as counter-terrorism and protection against thievery, it is necessary.
We keep wondering at this blog at what point Britons will ever start to seriously complain. ID cards? Not much of a general stir. Erosion of the right to trial by jury? Yawn. EU Arrest Warrant? Yawn again. But maybe things are moving. The recent proposal by the government to impose road pricing across the land and enforce it by tagging cars drew forth a deluge of complaints via the government’s own internet-based petition system. I wonder whether the prospect of busybodies crawling all over a home before it is put up for sale will have the same effect. Let’s hope so.
There is an old and wise saying that ‘an armed society is a polite society’. It is also the case that a private society remains a private society as well. That is, the importance and respect paid by governments to a citizen’s right to privacy flows on to the rest of society. In contrast, when a government disregards the right of its citizens to keep matters private, other organisations in society will take their cue from the government’s lead.
Take gambling for example. The online sports betting industry in Australia has sprung up like mushrooms after autumn rain in Australia since the advent of the Internet. People used to like to have a wager on a football or cricket game in the friendly environment of a pub, but since the online bookmakers have opened, the betting habits of Australians have increased markedly.
It is not only Australians that have been bitten by the sports betting bug either. But it is illegal in many parts of the world, and that has created more problems then it has solved. When a market is not allowed to be filled by honest business folk, it is instead filled by organised crime figures and all the baggage that this brings. One of the biggest items of luggage is the curse of match-fixing in popular sports.
→ Continue reading: People go where governments lead
The only substantive issue on which David Cameron declaimed that made him in any way preferable (or to be more accurate, distinguishable) from the Blairite Labour Party was the issue of ID cards.
Cameron (eventually) came down against them once he realised just how unpopular the scheme was. Well it seems that the impending Brown government is also going to give ID cards the heave-ho, which if true is indeed a good thing.
So, no excuse left for actual conservatives not abandon the Tories and vote UKIP then.
There is a scandal in the UK Department of Health’s IT management. The BBC reports it thus:
The Department of Health has apologised for an apparent security lapse which allowed the personal details of junior doctors to be accessed online.
Channel 4 News reported that a breach on the NHS Medical Training Application Service website allowed public access for at least eight hours. The department said the details had only been available briefly, and only to people making employment checks.
[…]
Phone numbers, addresses, previous convictions and sexual orientation were among details available since at least 0900 BST, it reported. The Department of Health was alerted at 1635 BST and the breach closed at 1705 BST.
The opposition spokesmen were on it straightway, pointing out that if this could happen with temporary information on 7,000 junior doctors, what hope was there for the medical records of the entire country intended be held on the NHS Connecting for Health system, or all those personal details being sought out for the NIR, to remain secure?
All very well and good. They won’t be. And we should thank Andrew Lansley MP for taking the opportunity to point it out. But I cannot help feeling let down by the response of media and politicians. “Insecure!” they bleat.
Nowhere, yet, have I heard or read in the mainstream discussion of this incident what seems to me the most screamingly obvious and fundamental questions. What business is it of the DoH to supervise the selection of individual doctors for individual hospital placements at all? And what the hell is it doing collecting information about doctors’ religions, sexual preferences and criminal records in the first place? If you have committed a crime the nature of which debars you from being a doctor, then you’re no longer a doctor, so you should not be on the list. If you have not then your crimes are as irrelevant as your religion or your sexuality, and they should not be. No doubt they were also as carefully classified as to race and ethnic origin as would satisfy apartheid authorities re-equipped with modern computers.
When are people going to rebel against the presumption that government may pigeonhole as it pleases, and anything a bureaucrat with a checklist asks he is entitled to know?
Unless you have a damn good reason, I decide what I’ll tell you about myself based on the nature of our relationship. Information is power. Information is intimacy. Forced disclosure of private information is data-rape.
Those 7,000 young doctors were only incidentally abused by the feeble security. They were deliberately data-raped by the Department of Health first.
Steven Baker of Blogspotting writes about his experience of casino backstage:
They have banks and banks of TV screens looking at the tables and the traffic of people. They have fixed cameras over every table, and tracking cameras operating within what look like black cantaloupe-sized half domes on the ceilings.
They zoom on one woman’s behaviour:
Then he saw it. She had her cards, a black jack, and with one quick movement she upped her bet by adding another $5 chip. We watched again and again in slow motion.
This is still fine by me. The casino is private property, in a business where some people are highly motivated to cheat. It is what happened afterwards that I find interesting.
They decided she was no pro. Still, they sent a security person to talk to her as she was leaving the table. We watched. She was surprised, confused, then grave. Then he said something that put her at ease. She relaxed, smiled, joked, and then went along her tipsy way.
I share Steven’s unease and his realisation that these casinos are giving us a preview of life in the coming age of surveillance.
Increasingly our movements and gestures, online and off, will be open to scrutiny by companies and governments alike. It will be up to them to decide what to crack down on, what to let pass. In making these decisions, they’ll be weighing not only our innocence or guilt, but also our happiness as customers, our ability to stir up a fuss, the cost of the public perception that they’re snoops. The upshot: We won’t have much privacy, but crafty governments and companies will give us the illusion we do.
In other words, technology in an environment that has not evolved to match it, i.e. does not have respect for the individual as a fundamental principle, eventually leads to a dystopia. In a society without openness and individual autonomy, technology amplifies and entrenches the power of the centralised system, however benign the original intention. I am reminded of The Difference Engine, a novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. The story is set in Victorian times, in a society with all the pathologies of an authoritarian system, i.e. one lacking proper checks and balances. It is taken to the point of grotesqueness and shown as ultimately fragile – its strength rests on the technology to the exclusion of individual freedom. Innovation is institutionalised, variety killed, leading to vulnerability to outside innovation and to inherent flaws within the system.
The difference between the impact of technology online and offline could not be more stark. Offline we have the modern Panopticon, surveillance cameras of increasing sophistication and intrusiveness. Online we still have the ability to protect ourselves or can find those who can help us do so rather than have our ‘protection’ imposed by a centralised institution. Yes, the internet is an anarchy and a sewer – as Ben Laurie who ought to know describes it :). But it is also a space where new ways of doing things can emerge and more importantly where individuals can flourish without depending on organisational resources. Offline we are defenceless against somebody building the aforementioned Panopticon, online there are ways to design against it.
So simply put, I would rather have the anarchy and the sewer with individual sovereignty than a Big Brother in whatever disguise.
cross-posted from Media Influencer
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
