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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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You may think the Belgians are a bit presumptuous by granting themselves jurisdiction over the entire planet in the matter of alleged war-crimes, but they have nothing on our Home Secretary David Blunkett who is trying to turn everyone in the developed world into lab rats:
Even before the Government has decided how to proceed with its identity card scheme, the Home Secretary David Blunkett claims to have persuaded his G8 colleagues to take a look at “smart” passports.
No firm commitment was made by Mr Blunkett’s G8 counter-parts at Monday’s meeting, and most of them were probably just being polite in expressing support in principle. But Mr Blunkett is seemingly determined to press ahead with a plan to require all British passports to contain chips capable of storing unique biometric information about the bearer, including fingerprints and iris scans.
I realise how much this sounds like wishful thinking but it does sound to me as if Mr.Blunkett’s G8 counter-parts were humouring him. As indeed they should. Not only is the technology referred to unlikely to work in the way that Mr.Blunkett has suggested or at all, but it is also to be hoped that his counter-parts have recognised this scheme as merely the latest manifestation of New Labour’s neurosis.
As per usual, the British Home Office has its portentious-sounding reasons. They have shuffled through their pack of disposable justifications and come up with stopping ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘terrorists’ as the raisons du jour and I can only assume that they are blissfully immune to the hollow ring which has now grown resonant enough to shatter glass.
If such technology could indeed prevent some terrible terrorist atrocity then it would, at least, be worthy of consideration (if not necessarily implementation) but surely everybody knows that it will do no such thing. Mr.Blunkett may as well claim that his biometric passports will reduce sun-spot activity, prevent child abuse and turn base metal into gold without being any less plausible.
Overwhelmingly, illegal immigrants and potential terrorists originate from Third World countries where no databases exist and few people have genuine passports let alone biometric ones. So they will continue to swan in to collect their welfare cheques in South London and plan bomb attacks in Manchester without so much as let or hindrance while the law-abiding, tax-paying British holidaymakers and business travellers get turned into day-release prisoners; watched, tracked and monitored feverishly to no end whatsoever.
But this is all a part of the game we play in Britain. Our political masters work night-and-day to come up with frightfully impressive techno-whizzbangs while we all turn away and pretend not to notice the godawful, augean mess they have made out of every single thing they have laid their hands on.
New Labour politicians are like the idiot children of wealthy tycoons, skilled only in lavishing around vast sums of other people’s money in a squalid attempt to purchase popularity and self-esteem. Scratch the surface and what you find is stupid, loathsome and incompetent. They are deserving of nothing except our unalloyed contempt.
A pal close to our hearts (and purses) comes into conflict with the authorities. More specifically, on-line auction company eBay said its PayPal auction payment unit is being investigated for possible violations of the USA Patriot Act. Shock! Horror!
Last month eBay received a letter from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Missouri about the alleged violations. The letter states that PayPal’s earlier practice of providing payment services to online gambling merchants violated provisions in the Patriot Act that “prohibit the transmission of funds that are known to have been derived from a criminal offense or are intended to be used to promote or support unlawful activity.”
Sound dangereous. I am so glad Americans are now protected by the Patriot Act against PayPal wretched practices. Apparently, the ‘crime’ happened almost 2 years ago, before eBay acquired PayPal. Part of the transaction was a committment to stop using the PayPal unit for gambling business. You can breath out now, it is not as if they were secretly raising funds for terrorists.
The authorities offered to “rescind the allegations if PayPal pays the amount of money it earned by handling online gambling transactions from October 2001, through July, 2002, plus interest.” So justice will be done and the American public can sleep safely again.
If I remember correctly, the Patriot Act, passed after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., was to give law enforcement authorities “expanded tools for investigating and deterring future terrorist acts”. We live in dangerous times, when on-line auction payment units can commit crimes under anti-terrorist legislation at will…!
The British Broacasting Corporation, as many readers will know, is paid for out of a tax, the licence fee. And here is further evidence that the BBC, which regards much of the terrestrial television world as its personal fiefdom, will stop at nothing to track down those who don’t believe the BBC has a divine right to permanent existence.
As the saying goes, you couldn’t make it up.
There are signs of an unwelcome strain of unilateralism in this country. It is leading to dangerous instability:
“A £10,000 motorway speed camera has been cut down with a blow torch and thrown off a bridge.
PC Adams said the camera was a write-off and the film inside would have been ruined.”
I wish it to be known that I am outraged by this senseless, fascistic attack on an innocent speed camera that was simply going about its lawful business. All civilised people should rise up in righteous anger and resolve that this kind of thing should never happen again!
Lastminute founder Martha Lane Fox admitted to a little indiscretion. The dotcom kept a record of all men who had ordered red roses for Valentine’s Day 2002 and then sent them an email this year asking if they’d like to do the same thing.
Lane Fox revealed that, since some ended up going to home email addresses, the result was “quite a few phone calls from wives who didn’t get any flowers from their husbands last year, demanding to know where we’d sent them”.
Now we know why exactly is data collection bad. Sod privacy and civil liberties – there is a threat of confronting wives ‘foxed’ over missing flowers…
Yesterday, the Assets Recovery Agency has been set up to seize the wealth of previously untouchable “Mr Bigs” who have not been convicted of an offence but whose way of life is paid for by crime. It will take on cases referred to it by UK police forces, Customs & Excise, the Inland Revenue, the National Crime Squad and the Serious Fraud Office. Its work is considered so sensitive that its agents will be allowed to use pseudonyms – including in court – and the Government refuses to say where it is based.
The Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) will not have to prove that the people whom it prosecutes are guilty of any crime. The onus will be on the man with the Jaguar, the gold bracelet and the holiday home in Ocho Rios to show that he came by his luxuries legally. Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which set up the agency, cases will be decided on the balance of probabilities, rather than the stricter criminal test of certainty beyond reasonable doubt.
The prosecutors will need only to accuse someone of living ‘above their means’ to bring them to court (without a jury, I might add), if they have “reasonable grounds” for believing that their wealth had been acquired illegally. However, it is the owner’s responsibility to prove otherwise and assets could be seized on the “balance of probabilities”. This is a far cry from the “beyond reasonable doubt” requirements of the criminal courts. It will, therefore, be possible for the civil courts to seize the assets of someone found not guilty in the criminal courts. Oh, and the presumption of innocence has gone out of the window long before the judge’s ‘balancing act’.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary elaborates: The agency is coming after the homes, yachts, mansions and luxury cars of the crime barons. This is also about cracking down on local crooks well known in their communities for their flash cars, designer clothes and expensive jewellery but no legitimate means of income.
And Jane Earl, director of the ARA reassures:
If you have a large house and five places in the Caribbean, with no visible means of support, no rich aunties who have recently died leaving the odd five million and no successful lottery tickets, it will not do to say that someone gave you the money.
It is as if all their hatred is directed not so much against criminals as against the trappings of wealth. If Mr Blunkett and Ms Earl think they have a case against somebody, they should be made to prove it.
Oh, but they can’t do that because the justice system is so screwed up. Let’s hire some anonymous thugs then. First we get the Bad Big Criminals and then let’s see what we can do without any competition…
Arguments are getting quite heated among libertarians about the claim that the US is a potential threat to freedom versus the view that the US is the best guarantor of freedom in the world today. I happen to agree with both statements.
It would be absurd to claim that the US is a worse place to live than peacetime Iraq, unless one happened to enjoy being part of a quasi-fascist police state. It is reasonable to worry about the potential threat to freedom posed by the world’s only superpower: there is no one to overthrow that state if it should go rotten.
I am disappointed in the complacency of some US libertarians and conservatives who ought to remember that wartime is the time when most encroachments on freedom can be justified. I have been accused of hype for using Hillary Clinton as an example of what a horrible US could be. Surely there can’t be anyone who thinks that none of Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, Hoover, F.D.Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush senior and Clinton were ever a threat to freedom? Or that no one will ever be elected to the US presidency who is a bad person?
I certainly wish the US forces in the Middle East a speedy and successful trip. I equally hope that the plan is to remove the tyrant with no or low civilian casualties, both for humanitarian reasons, but also because a post-Saddam Iraq will be less resentful of US troops if there hasn’t been carpet-bombing, or bad target intelligence.
I remain convinced that the British forces will either be as symbolic or ineffective as the Piedmont-Sardinian contingent during the Crimean War, or worse that they are headed for a repeat of Isandlwana, Majuba Hill, or Dunkirk. Bluntly the best troops in the world are cannon fodder when they run out of ammunition, the comms equipment doesn’t work and their boots have melted in the sun.
As for ID cards for use against terrorism. Yes they can help. Yes they are also a violation of personal liberty. But I would be rather more convinced if the British government weren’t providing safe havens for terrorists whether leftist, Islamist or Irish.
As a dual national I have a French national identity card. As a British national who doesn’t have a driving licence and whose passport expired in December of last year, I have no state approved form of identifying myself.
Naturally I have never been asked to produce a form of identification in France by a state official except when crossing a border. Equally naturally I have been asked numerous times by police officers in the United Kingdom to identify myself (despite this being illegal without some probable cause, but then I suppose I have a shifty look).
Therefore I fear that a British identity card will become the pretext of even more bullying of white middle-class people by the low-life pigs that pass for law-enforcement officers in the UK today.
During the Second World War, I am told that a well known local dignitary in Ulster was chatting to a police officer at a railway station whilst waiting for a relative to arrive from Belfast. After twenty minutes the police officer said to the local businessman he’d known for years: “Mr Smith, please show me your identity card.” He then proceeded to arrest Mr Smith for failing to carry proper documentation. I suspect that a Gestapo officer would have shown more common-sense.
The chances are that the present loutish types will not behave better than the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s treatment of a Protestant businessman in 1942. Unfortunately, there is a genuine security advantage to identity cards (even when they can be forged). They provide an audit trail for car hire, bank accounts etc.
But of course in France, of course no self-respecting hotelier would dream of asking a single male for identification, unless they wished to cash a cheque…
The government’s ‘consultation exercise’ on the introduction of ID cards and which we flagged up last month officially ended yesterday.
A lot of people who hold strong views on this subject, including the Samizdata team, have made those objections known to the Home Office but I rather doubt that that will stymie the determination of HMG to press ahead with their introduction. The governments wants an ID card scheme and, if opinion surveys on the matter are to be believed, so does much of the British public. It is only a matter of time.
A trifling relief though, is that the Independent has decided to live up to its name for a change:
“Initially the state bureaucracy made showing one’s card a precondition for dealing with it. Today, it is business that increases the reach of identity cards. Spaniards have long needed them to open bank accounts; now they are vital for any credit-card purchase, and bureaux de change won’t serve you without them. It’s also impossible to buy a mobile telephone without theDNI, for the network will log its number with that of the phone. I guess the police can see such records: they are certainly told who is checking into Spanish hotels, since Spaniards must show their DNI. The hotel passes its number straight to the police.
Employers love identity cards. They photocopy the DNIs of new staff, whose payslips then carry the number for tax purposes. This, linked to bank records, allows the authorities to track individuals all through Spain’s financial system. What really amazes me is the way Spain’s card is needed for such harmless activities as renting a car or flat – or getting married. Our church did not read the banns but instead asked for DNI numbers. Even the nursery school expected to see it before taking our child.
When I ask Spaniards “Why?”, they seem surprised. Then I remember that at 14 they all had to visit their local police station to be fingerprinted and photographed before receiving their first DNI card. It’s a rite of passage that makes young Spaniards feel grown up, yet the first time they use their card is to sit school exams. Many will argue that such obsessive bureaucracy is cultural and could never come to Britain, but I predict it will. In Spain, British giants such as Barclaycard and Vodafone already ask to see customers’ identity cards and will do so here.”
A salutory reminder of not just the way that compulsory ID cards turn a society into an open-air prison but also of the profound difference between Anglo-Saxon ethos and that of Continental Europe. In Britain sadly, the former has been discarded in favour of the latter. Madness, utter madness.
“Continental experience shows that identity cards will dramatically change life in Britain. It also reveals why Whitehall really wants them. The daily logging of their unique card numbers will create audit trails that lead to that Blairite dream, joined-up government! This already exists in Europe because entire populations dutifully troop along to acquire identity cards, just because they always did. I wonder how Mr Blunkett will force 50 million-odd Britons to do likewise.”
All true enough but, unlike the author, I do not expect either Mr.Blunkett or any of his successors to be thwarted to any significant degree by the public. Due to the enactment of anti-money laundering laws, it is already impossible to open a bank account, transact money or buy a property in Britain without being required to produce a passport or driving licence. These impositions were introduced by stealth in the 1990’s without either a word of dissent or murmer of complaint. Moving to a universal ID card of the continental variety is but another few steps, especially in a few years when the principle of a government audit trail will have become widely accepted as a part of the social landscape.
I daresay the introduction of the cards will prove to be fraught with bungling and bureaucratic horrors but if anyone expects the British people not to stand for it, then they are heading for a crashing disappointment.
It is a hallmark of all sinister government programmes that they are never advertised in advance as being sinister. Some might argue that this kind of deception is only to be expected, given the old ‘gently-boiling-frog’ theory. My own view is that the architects of these schemes genuinely don’t see them as the slightest bit sinister. In fact, quite the opposite.
For example, I have no doubt that the Whitehall mandarins behind this proposal regard it as a laudable exercise in sound administration:
“The Office for National Statistics has told the BBC it is planning the first official national wealth survey.
The new survey could include collecting data on a range of wealth indicators, from secured loans, investments, possessions and pensions take-up to house prices – and is aimed at getting a better picture of the country’s and individual wealth.”
A modern ‘domesday book’ listing who has got what and how much of it; a one-stop reference resource that will prove indispensable to the next generation of public sector wealth-grabbers.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps this is just another sterile technocratic exercise formulated for the purpose of providing lots of bureaucrats with years-worth of statistic fiddling, an exercise which they appear to love for its own sake. I certainly hope so but I can’t seem to get the word ‘sinister’ out of my mind, especially when the proposal is expressed in terms like this:
“It is believed the data could be used to formulate fiscal and social policies and to link the government’s policies closer to people’s real wealth.”
Management-speak or polite euphamism?
A Canadian Samizdata Reader writes in to alert us about the state of privacy & civil liberties in Canada.
The Canadian Privacy Commissioner yesterday released a damning report of the Canadian federal government with respect to its approach to the privacy of the citizens of Canada. According to him, fundamental human rights are at stake and September 11th is being used as an excuse for the infringements. Frankly, as a Canadian, I have been consistently dismayed with Ottawa’s response to all matters related to September 11th.
There are articles in the major Canadian newspapers – including the National Post.
“The government is, quite simply, using Sept. 11 as an excuse for new collections and uses of personal information about all of us Canadians that cannot be justified by the requirements of anti-terrorism and that, indeed, have no place in a free and democratic society.”
[…]
Mr. Radwanski also took issue with proposals that would allow the government to monitor Internet activities and cellphone calls, stating: “I do not see any reason why e-mails should be subject to a lower standard of privacy protection than letters or phone calls.”
[…]
Mr. Radwanski’s complaints about anti-terror measures relate primarily to “function creep,” when information collected ostensibly to stop terrorists is subsequently used for a host of other purposes.
Additionally, you can go directly to the source, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
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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.
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