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There’s a Reason online article here, and comments about it all on the Reason blog here, about this:
One night a few weeks ago, I was half-watching a black-and-white, early ’60s episode of The Andy Griffith Show on TV LAND (Episode 60, “The Bookie Barber”), when, all of a sudden, the homespun wisdom of Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor touched on today’s heated debate over how to balance individual privacy with security. Andy responded to a suggestion by his deputy Barney Fife by saying: “You can’t ask a private citizen to become a police spy. It’s too dangerous. Something could go wrong.” The statement jolted me, and I thought, if only Sheriff Taylor had been there to offer this profound piece of advice to the Republicans and Democrats writing the USA PATRIOT Act.
Title III of the act, which contains provisions to counter money-laundering, requires a host of private businesses to become “police spies” on their customers. These little-known provisions of the much-talked about law draft a substantial number of private-sector employees as citizen soldiers in the war on terrorism as well as on the broadly-defined crime of “money laundering.”
Says commenter James Merrit:
A free people, empowering a government that acts consistent with the ideals of freedom, will have the minimum to fear from terrorists. It won’t be a perfect world, or a world without danger, but it will be the best we can hope for. We need to reject the fear-based policies and concentrate on freedom-based ones, starting as soon as possible. Do not empower the fascists; do not empower the socialists. We’ve seen where their roads lead. Empower those who uphold the principles of freedom in word and deed. Making a good start really is as simple as that.
We have similar money laundering stuff here in Britain as well, as David Carr explains.
And turning traders into government stooges has also been here a long time. If you buy a TV, the shop you buy it from has long wanted to know who you are so that it can tell the government and the government can check that you’ve got a TV license. If you refuse to say who you are, you are liable to end up not buying the TV, as Michael Yardley explains in the latest Spectator:
They changed tack. ‘You’ve got to give us your name and address or you can’t have the television.’ ‘But I’ve paid for it.’ ‘You can’t have it.’ At this point, perhaps I should have walked out of the shop with the television and risked prosecution for some unspecified offence in Kafkaesque Britain. I went for the less dramatic option. ‘Well, I’ll have my money back.’ The first response from the shop staff was that this was impossible. They backed down when I pressed the point. I was directed to ‘customer services’. A credit was made to my card. I left without a television. What a palaver.
Driving home, I thought back to the last time I had bought a television, ten years or more ago. I had a dim memory of being asked for my name and address ‘for the guarantee’. It wasn’t for that purpose, I now knew. It was a ploy to get the information for the faceless ones. …
Guy Herbert finds this is a bit worrying.
The BBC reports that six people suspected of terror activities have been re-arrested on lesser charges. All six were originally arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act, on suspicion of involvement in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. They were released under terror laws but re-arrested on other matters such as bank fraud and immigration offences.
What’s wrong with this picture? Under the Terrorism Act reasonable suspicion is not required to arrest or search. Therefore it has potential to be used for fishing expeditions – police arrest you and search your property without proper cause. Of course, they’ll have an actual cause, such as being uncooperative with officials or some such pretext, and give themselves a week to find something on you. Once they have found something on you, their actions are justified in the eyes of the Lawn Order brigade.
Given the state of the criminal law and bureaucratic reach, I sincerely doubt there is anyone in the country who could not be charged with some crime after a week of interrogation and search, even among those whose lawns are in perfect order and believe they have nothing to hide.
Both us civil libertarians and our critics are in the habit of arguing that technology, especially in the hands of government, never works properly, so either (civil libertarians): it should never be relied upon – or (anti civil libertarians): why are civil libertarians making such a fuss about it if it’s so useless? My own opinion is that this stuff is getting inexorably cleverer, and that to assume permanent techno-incompetence, in these times of all times, is ridiculous. Bureaucratic and legal confusion can be relied upon to continue indefinitely. But technology can be depended upon to improve.
Here’s a BBC report today, about the inexorable development CCTV software:
Visitors to a South Yorkshire science centre are helping the FBI in a project to improve CCTV evidence.
Scientists from the University of Sheffield were asked to help the US law enforcement agency develop a way of identifying often blurry faces caught on video footage.
Now 3,000 volunteers at the Magna Centre in Rotherham are to have their heads scanned to form a three-dimensional image which can then be compared with enhanced CCTV footage.
Researchers at the university’s department of forensic pathology hope the resulting technique will revolutionise the way CCTV evidence is used in court cases on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Magna” eh? Anything to do with Magna Carta?
Over at the Adam Smith Institute Blog, Mark Griffin says they’re about to legalise spam, by defining it, incompetently. That means whatever dodges its way around the definition ain’t spam, right? So by trying to stop it they are going to allow it.
Patrick Crozier’s Transport Blog is steadily becoming a blog to be reckoned with. And yesterday and today, Patrick posted two White Rose Relevant bits, on the new law against mobile phones in cars, and (this presumably being kit that will also help to enforce the new phone law) surveillance cameras for spying on speeding motorists.
On mobiles in cars, Patrick agrees with David Carr. Bad new law. On the cameras? Well, his piece is entitled: “It’s not the speed cameras that are to blame – it’s the law”.
More on vote (mis?)counting machines, from Paul Krugman in today’s New York Times. As always with the NYT, hurry.
Opening paragraphs:
Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, “I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” No surprise there. But Walden O’Dell – who says that he wasn’t talking about his business operations – happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.
For example, Georgia – where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections – relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail.
Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be available for public inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking these safeguards haven’t caused problems. “How do you know?” he asks.
What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.
I think if people are seriously about democracy, they should keep it all on paper. That way, onlookers and overseers can see fair play, and with luck they can spot at least some of the unfair play. Put your vote in a computer system, and who the hell knows where it ends up?
Googling “privacy” took me to this piece about the problem of junk mail sent to dead people.
After this scribe found black humor last year at the ceaseless stream of direct mail advertising directed at my recently deceased partner, an admonition arrived from a reader who lost her husband in 1999.
“Write about this again in a year,” she said. “The junk will just keep arriving, and by then you may have stopped laughing.”
Yes it really isn’t that funny, especially as the failure to find good ways to stop junk mail (and junk email) will mean bad ways, i.e. ways that don’t stop the junk, but stop other things which are good, like, I don’t know, freedom of communication.
News of some White Rose Relevant Modern Art. At one of my other places I expressed some uninformed prejudices (“messing about”, I called it, and a commenter took exception) about an artist called David Cotterrell, prejudices I still believe to be on the button, now that they are slightly better informed by me having browsed through this site.
Here, though, is a description of a David Cotterrell work, which brings together the worlds of art and of surveillance:
‘The Paranoia of a London Attache Case’ consists of seven twenty two minute video recordings playing concurrently. It was produced using the closed-circuit surveillance camera network within Monument/Bank Underground Station in the heart of the City of London.
The Installation tracks the movement of the attashe case as it is carried by an actor through the labyrinth of tunnels, platforms and escalators that make up the public areas of the station. Observed by 81 of the station’s security cameras, the journey begins and ends with the case being exchanged on opposite platforms.
The security cameras were connected to seven monitors, in turn connected to seven video recorders. By pre-mapping the journey then filming and editing it ‘live’, it was possible to create a continuous sequence. This runs from 14:08:30 to 14:31:10 the time coding and location description can be seen at the bottom of each screen. The sound was recorded simultaneously using a recorder concealed within the attache case.
Look out Michelangelo. Still, it shows you something of what the arties are brooding on these days.
And next time you complain about the government spying on you, be ready for them to say: “Oh but it’s art.”
Here (in the better a bit late than a bit never category) is vnunet.com reporting on Wednesday’s Queen’s Speech:
Plans to introduce identity cards have been included in the Queen’s Speech today, marking a significant testing ground for biometric security technology.
Details of the plans were kept to a minimum, with Her Majesty telling parliament that the government “will take forward work on an incremental approach to a national identity cards scheme and will publish a draft bill in the new year”.
It is likely that the cards will incorporate biometric technology. With potentially almost 50 million cards (for UK citizens aged 16 or above) being issued, this would be a major testing ground for the technology.
The technology is controversial, and the cabinet is not united:
Even Cabinet ministers have been sceptical about the plans. When talking about ID cards recently, Trade and Industry secretary Patricia Hewitt acknowledged that the government’s track record indicated that large IT projects had “a horrible habit of going wrong”.
And as civil libertarians predicted long ago, the Data Protection Act will only apply to the citizenry, not to the Government itself:
The legislation to be unveiled next year will also aim to iron out potential problems with existing laws, such as the Data Protection Act (DPA), to give the government greater flexibility on how it can use personal information.
Those pesky “existing laws”.
The DPA imposes conditions on how stored personal information can be used.
The government intends to combine information currently stored by the Passport Agency and the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency to form a national identity database. This procedure could face problems without the clarification.
Ah yes. Clarification.
The era of Joined Up Government approaches inexorably.
ASIO stands for Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and the ASIO is in the news, here, and here:
An international law expert believes the Federal Government’s proposed changes to its ASIO laws to extend the questioning time allowed for non-English speakers would be a “clear contravention” of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Associate Professor Donald Rothwell, from the University of Sydney, said amendments expected to be introduced today into Parliament, which would extend the period ASIO could question people who needed interpreters from 24 hours to 48 over a week, would breach Article 26 of the covenant.
… and here:
Labor is expected to agree to key legislative amendments that will provide stiff penalties for unauthorised disclosure of information relating to ASIO’s new special questioning and detention powers.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock will introduce the amendments today, with an expectation they will be passed by both chambers before the parliament rises next week for Christmas.
The most contentious aspect of the legislation relates to the disclosure provisions by which the subject of an ASIO warrant or his lawyer or other persons convey information about the course of ASIO’s investigations.
Wired reports that Congress delayed the planned takeoff of a controversial new airline passenger-profiling system until an independent study of its privacy implications and effectiveness at stopping terrorism can be completed.
A congressional conference committee, which was reconciling the Senate and House versions of the Department of Homeland Security’s budget for next year, opted to keep the Senate’s stronger language that prohibits deployment of the Transportation Security Administration’s CAPPS II program until the General Accounting Office certifies to Congress that the system will not finger too many innocent passengers.
The study will also check whether the system will effectively pinpoint terrorists, and whether an appeals system is in place for those delayed or prohibited from flying. CAPPS II is intended as a high-tech replacement for the current system, which simply checks passenger names against a list of suspected terrorists.
The new system will require passengers to provide airlines with additional information, which the agency will check against commercial databases and a watch list of suspected terrorists and people wanted for violent crimes. The system will then color-code each passenger, according to decisions made by the system’s pattern-matching algorithms.
An ideologically diverse coalition of civil-liberty advocates oppose the project, saying the system would be Big Brotheresque and ineffective.
This is far from won but at least it is a step in the right direction. Most likely the GAO study will be done, the boxes ticked and the next terrorist attack will result in yet another series of knee-jerk reactions from governments. But I would like to be proven wrong.
Sunday Herald reports that UK wants similar powers to controversial US Patriot Act.
Sweeping new emergency legal powers to deal with the aftermath of a large terrorist attack in Britain are being considered by the government.
The measures could potentially outlaw participation in a protest march, such as last week’s demonstrations during President Bush’s state visit, making it, in effect, a criminal offence to criticise government policy.
In an attempt to give the UK government similar powers to those rushed through in the US after the 9/11 attack on New York in 2001, it is understood that a beefed-up version of current civil contingencies law is being considered. It will allow the government to bypass or suspend key parts of the UK’s human rights laws without the authority of parliament.
…
Aware of the current level of scare-mongering following the Istanbul bombing and the threats made by al-Qaeda-linked groups that further suicide attacks were being planned on targets both in the UK and abroad, a source close to the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, last night denied his department were seeking a massive and immediate injection of cash from the Treasury. This would be needed to foot the bill if Britain’s streets were to be flooded with armed police in an almost constant level of red alert.
Despite Blunkett saying he was “sick and tired” of people pretending there was not a threat from terrorists and insisting only “very, very good intelligence would save us”, the Home Office seems to have no plan to boost security spending this or next year.
If “Fortress Britain” were to be achieved, with countrywide security checks, increased police surveillance and widespread detention of any suspect group or individual, the Home Office’s annual budget would rocket.
Hm.
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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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