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]
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I don’t think that this article from August 13th, by Paul Craig Roberts, has had any mention here. If it has, apologies for not noticing. If not, better very late than never, I hope you agree.
Opening paragraphs:
When will the first lawyer be arrested, indicted and sent to prison for failing to help the government convict his client? You can bet it will be soon. Once the Securities and Exchange Commission, Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Justice (sic) complete their assault on the attorney-client privilege, they will rush to make an example of a lawyer, lest any fail to understand that their new role in life is to serve as government informants on their clients.
Just as government bureaucrats used the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to assault the Bill of Rights and our constitutional protections, they are now using “accounting scandals” and “tax evasion” to assault the attorney-client privilege, a key component of the Anglo-American legal system that enables a defendant, whether guilty or innocent, to mount a defense against the overwhelming power of the state.
This is the sort of thing that David Carr has been writing about in Britain, for some time now.
Today’s Guardian reports:
The home secretary, David Blunkett, is to stage a pilot scheme this autumn to test the introduction of a national identity card despite the lack of strong cabinet backing for the idea.
The Home Office confirmed last night that a six-month trial, testing the use of new generation fingerprint and eye-scanning technology, would be completed by April to “assess customer perceptions and reactions” and estimate costs. It is believed that the trial will be carried out in an as yet unnamed small market town with a population of about 10,000.
Note, as did Guardian home affairs editor Alan Travis, the creepy use of the word “customer”.
UPDATE: Paul Staines comments at Samizdata.
Layman’s Logic has a brief summary of some of the issues surrounding RFID tags (radio transmitters in products), which soon may be in most goods in large stores. One issue is quite how kooky a number of the opponents of the tags are. Another is persistent rumours Euro bills with have tags in in the future. Another is what to do about them:
“[W]hat I need to know is how to kill the tags when I get them. I don’t care that people can see what I’m buying when I use cards – they can see that anyway if they can access credit info, and they want to track stock. Not a problem. On the other hand, I would like to know how to kill the tags the moment I’ve bought something to avoid any nasty privacy surprises. Fortunately, Slashdot seem to have identified a few possibilities“
There’s an interesting White Rose relevant posting at 2 Blowhards just now. 2 Blowhards? Mostly culture in the paintings-movies-literature sense, but often they wander towards culture in the Brian’s Culture Blog sense (where culture means whatever I want it to mean). Anyway, Blowhard “Friedrich” put a piece up yesterday called They Know Two Much, which is about targetted marketing, in this case at the extremely rich. It’s surveillance in its way. As Friedrich says, of the people he’s writing about, the “geodemographic segmentation” merchants:
Well, the next time you get some direct mail or other advertising that seems to know exactly who you are and where you live and how much tread life remains on your right rear tire, you know who to thank – or blame.
Which makes the point nicely that these people will surely be getting into bed with the CCTV minders if they haven’t already. Which would supply the CCTV people with lots of money and motivation.
“Looks like a worn tyre there – give me the number would you? Make? Owner? Address? Phone? Thank you.” Then: call one from the police about driving with a worn tyre, and call two from the tyre salesman offering immediate delivery and fitting.
Ah, brave new world.
There was a White Rose relevant piece by Alasdair Palmer about the DC Stevens case in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph.
The more repulsive the crime, the greater the temptation to weaken the burden on the prosecution to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. Child abuse – and child pornography cannot be produced without child abuse – is a very repulsive crime. Yet the result of giving in to the temptation to lower the standard of evidence required to convict someone suspected of child abuse is inevitably that innocent people are convicted.
That’s good, but I recommend all of it.
For an attack on many of the articles that get cited here, arguing that the US Government’s War on Terror is dangerous for civil liberties, see Straight Talk on Homeland Security by Heather Mac Donald in City Journal (lLink from Iain Murray). Penultimate paragraph:
When the War on Terror’s opponents intone, “We need not trade liberty for security,” they are right – but not in the way they think. Contrary to their slogan’s assumption, there is no zero-sum relationship between liberty and security. The government may expand its powers to detect terrorism without diminishing civil liberties one iota, as long as those powers remain subject to traditional restraints: statutory prerequisites for investigative action, judicial review, and political accountability. So far, these conditions have been met.
We here are mostly not opponents of the War on Terror, but we are opponents of it being used as an excuse to expand government power in ways that will then be available to government officials to use across the board.
We agree here that it isn’t a zero sum thing between liberty and security, but that’s because we believe security is best protected by free people protecting themselves and each other. Some of us might even agree that the government “may” expand is powers with no harm done, but that’s hardly the point, is it? “So far, these conditions have been met.” And there the disagreement really begins. But that “So far” suggests that we and Heather Mac Donald might in due course all be re-united.
I always feel that whenever someone says that there is “no question” of something happening, it means there is and someone’s just asked it, and I now realise that I further suspect that when someone important enough to be quoted about it says that something is “essential”, without actually saying that it is going to happen, the game is up there too. If that’s right, then this is bad news:
The scientist in charge of setting up Britain’s DNA databank, which will collect information on the lifestyle, health and genes of 500,000 people, said he will oppose any attempt by police or the courts to gain access to the data.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Dr John Newton said strict confidentiality is essential if the UK Biobank project is to enjoy the public confidence it needs to succeed. Three years ago, police forced medical scientists in Edinburgh to hand over the confidential data of another research project to prosecute a volunteer in the study.
Critics of the UK Biobank, which aims to compare the influence of genes and lifestyle on the health of half a million volunteers, says there is nothing to stop this information also being used by the police, employers or insurance companies.
This paragraph sounds better:
But Dr Newton said there were no plans for a national biobank covering the entire population. He also questioned whether the information held on UK Biobank would be of any interest to the police. “People fear police will take a DNA sample from the scene of a crime, do a DNA test on it, then go to Biobank and run that DNA against our 500,000 and say, ‘OK, it was you’, and fish them out. As far as I understand it, they won’t be able to do that. We will not have done the entire DNA sequence of every participant, so we will simply not have the information on the same genetic variables that the police use [for DNA fingerprinting]. It is very difficult to say ‘never’, but I can’t see how Biobank will help police.”
But I suppose the danger here is not that this is already checkmate for genetic confidentiality, but that things are advancing (i.e. perhaps getting worse) one little step at a time.
First things first. First establish the principle that it’s okay to have a national DNA database. Then beef up what’s in it, to the point where the police could do what Dr Newton says they now couldn’t. Then allow the police to do just that. Then other government agencies get in on it …
In more traditional police-states, citizens may be blissfully unaware that they have done wrong until they are woken in the wee small hours by an ominous rapping on their front doors. In modern police-state Britain, the knock on the door is to be replaced by the thud on the doormat.
If this report from the UK Times is accurate (and it is just about creepy enough to be true) then it may be time to think about buying a bicycle:
EVEN George Orwell would have choked. Government officials are drawing up plans to fit all cars in Britain with a personalised microchip so that rule-breaking motorists can be prosecuted by computer.
Dubbed the “Spy in the Dashboard” and “the Informer” the chip will automatically report a wide range of offences including speeding, road tax evasion and illegal parking. The first you will know about it is when a summons or a fine lands on your doormat.
The plan, which is being devised by the government, police and other enforcement agencies, would see all private cars monitored by roadside sensors wherever they travelled.
Who the bloody hell are the ‘other enforcement agencies’? And the very notion of an informer in every vehicle! Saddam Hussein could only dream about that level of control.
Police working on the “car-tagging” scheme say it would also help to slash car theft and even drug smuggling.
The same old, same old. Every accursed and intrusive state abuse is sold to the public as a cure for crime and ‘drug-dealing’. The fact that it still works is proof that we live in the Age of Bovine Stupidity. A media advertising campaign showing seedy drug-dealers and leering child-molesters being rounded up as a result of this technology will have the public begging for a ‘spy in the dashboard’.
Having already expressed my doubts about the viability of new government schemes here I should add that the fact that this relies on technology rather than human agency means it just might.
The next step is an electronic device in your car which will immediately detetct any infringement of any regulation, then lock the doors, drive you to a football stadium and shoot you. HMG is reported to be very interested and is launching a feasibility study.
[This item has been cross-posted on Samizdata.]
This has obvious White Rose relevance:
Tony Blair is to announce plans to put up to half a million children deemed at risk of becoming criminals or getting into other trouble on a new computer register.
Teachers, family doctors and other professionals working with youngsters will be asked to name potential troublemakers whose personal details will then be placed on the database.
The new “identification, tracking and referral” system will allow the authorities to share information on vulnerable children, including their potential for criminal activity.
It will be an extension of the child protection register which, at present, is restricted to listing the names and addresses of children who are vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.
Professionals will be encouraged to include other factors, such as the likelihood of teenage pregnancy or the risk of “social exclusion”, in deciding which children should be monitored.
I think the scary thing about this is the combination of the precision and reach of a computer database with the subjectivity of some of the judgements concerning “potential” that are stored on it. Plus: Who gets to look at this database, and what decisions do they make in the light of the opinions collected in it?
The criminal law, in contrast, is (or ought to be) about what you have done, not about what someone merely thinks you might do.
But as so often here, I report, but can only speculate about those implications that we all need to think about. Perhaps others can be more definite.
The State of California has, I’d guess almost unnoticed, passed new financial privacy laws that require banks and other financial service providers to obtain their customer’s consent before passing or selling on their client’s financial details.
It shows that it is still possible to get legislators to pay attention to privacy issues, but, as this interview with the new law’s proposer, State Senator Jackie Speier reveals, you do have to be persistent.
Still, it’s good to see hard work paying off.
Here’s an article by Tom DeWeese of NewsWithViews.com, entitled Total Surveillance Equals Total Tyranny.
First three paragraphs:
In the name of fighting terrorism a new kind of government is being implemented in Washington, D.C. We are witnessing the birth of a powerful multi-billion dollar surveillance lobby consisting of an army of special interest groups, Washington lawyers, lobbyists, and high-tech firms with wares to sell.
The personal rights of American citizens, protected until now by the Bill of Rights, are the farthest thing from their minds as they seek to fill their pockets while enabling government to monitor and control our lives to a degree unheard of prior to September 11, 2001. This army seeks riches as it pushes for laws and regulations to spy on and control the lives of law-abiding Americans.
The Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA) reports that there are more than 100 federal entities involved in forging the largest conglomeration of government-private contractor interests since the creation of the Pentagon. GEIA represents hundreds of corporate members seeking to cash in on the Homeland Security-citizen-surveillance-spending spree.
The counter-terrorist-industrial complex?
For reasons best known to themselves the proprietors of the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail have elected not make the contents available on-line. As a result I cannot link to this story, so thanks are due to Dr.Chris Tame for posting it to the Libertarian Alliance Forum:
I went to a cafe in central London to meet a stranger.
I handed over £1,300 and a mere 48 hours to assume the new identity of ‘Odette Hinault’ complete with fake EU passport, driving licence and French ID card, together with a genuine National Insurance number. Within a day of becoming ‘Miss Hinault’ she had opened a bank account, registered with a GP, obtained a phone number and had claim forms for housing allowances and council tax benefits.
There was nothing to stop her plugging into an entire system of state handouts that would have more than repaid her £1,300 outlay within weeks.
So says a Daily Mail reporter called Sue Reid who went undercover (presumably) and succeeded in obtaining all manner of forged official documents.
Two of the many oft-floated (and disposable) justifications for establishing a national ID card system are that it will a) stop illegal immigration (or, at least, make it a lot harder to do) and b) stop cheats from defrauding the welfare state (or, at least, make it much harder to do).
Ms.Reid’s investigations prove pretty conclusively that both claims are manifest rubbish.
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