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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For as long as I can remember I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the principle of road pricing, for much the same reasons that I favour the pricing of any other scarce and desirable product or service. Reduce queueing caused by underpricing. Encourage the construction of better roads, more suited to the desires of drivers, more creatively designed. Pricing will enable road ownership, and that will enable better environmental policies, because owners will then be responsible for environmental impact. Etc.
However, there are two different ways of doing road pricing, both of which have big advantages and big disadvantages.
One. Anonymous Charging. Charge each vehicle to go past certain barriers, physical or electrical. Either the man at the wheel chucks some coins down a shute, or the place has a machine which debits the vehicle as it goes by, by debiting a box on the vehicle which has been filled up with money, gas meter style.
Advantage: Anonymity! The vehicle user is no more spied on than he is when he buys a pair of socks in a shop. If the vehicle user consents to the transaction tracking inherent in the use of a credit card, fair enough. But money remains an option, and money is freedom, because money is anonymous. (I remember once a trader in a street market shouting at me: “You don’t ask me where I got the stuff I’m selling, and I won’t ask you where you got your money.”)
Disadvantage: Cumbersomeness. Every barrier becomes a huge Thames Flood Barrier for cars. Installing machines in cars is complicated and expensive, and what if different cities use different systems? A different box for each system? Until the same system wins a battle of the gauges, it’s a nightmare either of delay or of incompatible equipment. → Continue reading: Total Surveillance versus Anonymous Charging: the road pricing dilemma
When Hong Kong was handed over to Communist China by the British state, to much joy and acclamation by credulous Chinese and Gweilos alike, the totalitarian gerontocracy in Peking pronounced soothingly that Hong Hong would retain its relatively liberal order under a doctrine ‘One nation, two systems’.
Tens of thousands of people have marched in protest at a planned anti-subversion law aimed at an EU style ‘harmonizing’ of Hong Kong law with that of the rest of Communist China. One nation, one system it would seem.
…the government is pushing through the national-security legislation, known as the “Article 23” measures, too quickly, and without enough public debate. The proposal is in many ways an attempt to bring Hong Kong’s laws regarding subversion, treason, sedition and the theft of “state secrets” in line with China’s.
Well it comes as no surprise to me that these patent lies only took six years to be revealed. I look forward to hearing the people who rejoiced at the surrender of Hong Kong’s people to China recanting their folly. I am not holding my breath however.
The Chinese way of dealing with effective protests
(WSJ link via Combustable Boy)
Exactly a year ago, Melanie Phillips has written an excellent article ID cards are not the British way. Alas, her arguments are as necessary and relevant as they were then.
She addresses every point in the debate, from the increased need for security, terrorism, mass immigration, problems with ‘compulsory’ entitlement cards, personal information on ‘smart card’, causes of rising crime etc.
The most central argument, though, is difference between the British concept of liberty and the European one:
Britain is not the same as Europe. We have a very different approach to liberty. Here, everything is permitted unless it is forbidden. People can go about their business without being expected to give an account of themselves.
By contrast, in Europe freedom is something that has to be codified and granted from above. So Europeans have always been used to producing ‘papers’ to prove themselves, a practice that we have always found unacceptable.
And her last paragraph certainly belongs here, on White Rose:
Now, thrashing around in panic to show that it is getting on top of our social problems, it is not coming up with policies that actually work but is proposing instead to nail down still further the coffin of British liberty.
The Telegraph has an update about the vote in the House of Lords on the European Union curbs on the sale of vitamins and mineral food supplements.
Peers voted by a majority of 53 last night to call upon ministers to revoke regulations due to implement the EU’s Food Supplements Directive in August 2005. But Health Minister Lord Warner said the vote would make no difference.
The UK is obliged to implement the directive. Failure to transpose its requirements properly would be a serious breach of our obligations under the EC Treaty and would result in infraction proceedings against the UK and in the likelihood of our facing heavy fines. Ultimately, implementation would be forced upon us.
If you walk into a large store of virtually any kind in Australia, you will see a sign just outside the door saying. “It is a condition of entry to this story that customers allow us to inspect the contents of their bags on leaving the shop”. Typically, when you leave the shop, there is a security guard outside the door who asks to inspect the contents of your bag. Virtually all customers open their bag, the guard looks inside the bag, and then the customers go on their way.
When growing up in Australia, I simply thought that this was the natural order of things. I never really thought about this as a violation of my privacy until I spent some time living in England in the 1990s. In England, such searches do not occur, presumably because either the British interpretation of the law is that they are not legal or the law is different. (I think that we are likely dealing different interpretations of the same common law here). When I returned to Australia, I suddenly became much more aware of bag searches in stores than had been the case before. And I became much more protective of my rights. I found that I was very unwilling to let anyone look in whatever bags I might be carrying.
Legally, the case for allowing such bag searches is flimsy. Without probable cause (which in practice usually means someone will have to have seen you take something off the shelf of the shop and put it in your bag) the shop has no right to detain you or to look in your bag. However, they can ask to look in your bag. You then have the right to refuse. If you refuse the shop can then ask you to not come back to the shop again, but they have no way of actually compelling you to open your bag for them.
→ Continue reading: Bag searches in Australian stores
The Washington Times reports that the FBI has concluded that the Matricula Consular card, issued by the Mexican government to Mexicans living in the United States, “is not a reliable form of identification” and poses a criminal and terrorist threat.
Steven McCraw, the assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Intelligence, said the identification cards are easy to obtain through fraud, and lack adequate security measures to prevent easy forgery. He cited examples of alien smugglers being arrested with up to seven different cards and an Iranian national who was arrested with a Matricula Consular card in his name.
Opponents of the cards’ use say they have turned into a back-door amnesty that allows illegal aliens to blend into society by letting them obtain bank accounts and some state and local services. Rep. Elton Gallegly, California Republican said:
The only people who need these cards are illegal immigrants, and sometimes criminals or terrorists.
None of the witnesses at a House immigration panel held last week could dispute that claim and the State Department admitted they have not studied the issue.
Link via World Watch Daily.
An opinion piece in today’s Telegraph alerts the readers:
A dangerous and disagreeable piece of legislation comes before the House of Lords today. In order to implement the EU’s directive on higher-dose vitamin supplements, the Government proposes to ban nearly 300 products currently on sale in our health stores.
The proscription of these vitamins is the first in a series of EU regulations dealing with alternative remedies. A second directive, covering herbal medicines, is already clanking its way through the machinery of state. There are proposals to regulate homoeopathy, and even to require a standard European qualification for herbalists (who, in England and Wales, have operated under a statute dating from Tudor times).
These restrictions are driven by something called “the precautionary principle”. The concept, emanating from Brussels and very popular with the EU types “holds that nothing should be legal until it can be shown to be safe”. In other words, it reverses the burden of proof.
The issue is not one of science, but of freedom. Here is a horrible demonstration of how the EU system can work, elevating corporate interests over individuals, and tossing aside all considerations of liberty and fairness in pursuit of harmonisation.
Voting against the legislation is, alas, only a gesture, since EU rules come into force automatically in Britain, but it is a gesture that should be made none the less.
The Guardian has reported on the latest developments in Money Laundering. This is the process whereby you have to prove your identity in order to open a bank account and shows that your money has not been received from an illicit source. Under the Money Laundering rules, enthusiastically expanded by the Financial Services Authority, this process is named as “know your customer”.
This is an example of where the rules provide authority for a particular group, cashiers, who proceed, in certain cases, to abuse it without any form of accountability. It would appear that bank staff have been demanding loudly for proof of identity and where the customer received their cash or cheque. Understandably, the customer finds this distasteful and intrusive.
However, the FSA states that it is only implementing the rules set by Her Majesty’s Government and the European Union.
The other intrusion into the financial privacy of the citizen involves the notification of any transaction above £10,700 in a suspicious activity report to the National Criminal Intelligence Service. There are an expected 100,000 SARs anticipated this year “from banks, financial advisers, estate agents, lawyers, accountants, jewellers and high value car dealers“. New rules on house purchase have resulted in deposits above £10,700, paid in cash, being sent for investigation as a SAR. Most of these SARs will not be examined because the reporting system is overwhelmed and understaffed. There are perverse consequences:
Fraud experts such as Liesel Annible of accountants Bentley Jennison, who is UK president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, believes the system can actually help criminals.
“What does NCIS do with all these reports? Firms are now disclosing so much because of the fear of prosecution that there is a danger of serious infringements being hidden by and lost under the noise of all the minor problems and unfounded suspicions. All these SARs just gum up the works – the vast majority are just stored”, she says.
One enters a strange world where the Royal Bank of Scotland can be fined £750,000 for breaching these strict rules even though no evidence of money laundering was ever found; and where rules for identity are enforced whilst money laundering often takes place elsewhere. The final consequence of these rules is that those who are unable to provide proof, especially the poor, find that they have an additional hurdle to overcome if they wish to use the financial infrastructure within the United Kingdom.
There are a number of indications from this article that the process of subcontracting the enforcement of regulation to private sector bodies results in unaccountable staff intruding upon the financial privacy of the ordinary citizen. A more positive note is that, where the citizen finds that his expectations of certain freedoms are abrogated, the response is anger rather than apathy.
The money laundering rules have perverse consequences and demonstrate that the financial privacy enjoyed by the British has been sacrificed to observe a set of regulations that have not worked.
EU Observer has an article about the European Commission’s proposal to treat European citizens as criminals or at least as criminal suspects. No really.
Apparently, the heads of state for EU countries who met in Greece last week have given the ‘green light’ to the process of collection of biometric data such as fingerprints, iris scan or DNA for a chip inbedded in the passports of all EU citizens.
Thomas Rupp of the European Referendum Campaign is not impressed:
Somehow – obviously – I suffer from a clash of realities: Didn’t a lot of people last year talk about “democratisation” of the European Union and making it more “citizen friendly”? – Right: this event was called the “Convention on the Future of Europe”. Obviously the future of Europe now begins with the need of EU citizens to provide their most intimate data to the state.
[…]
Provided this law will pass and they ask me for my personal data… Shall I give my fingerprints – or even my DNA – to a growing state which does not fulfil the minimum standards of a modern democracy? Where there is no separation of powers? That has a parliament, which has no right to initiate law? Where – instead – non-elected public servants have the monopoly to initiate law, which in the end is decided by the executives of the member states – avoiding control by their national parliaments?
[…]
Suppose I refuse to give away my fingerprints? What would happen? Would I immediately be classified a criminal? Someone who has to hide something, with bad intentions? Would I have to go to jail? Would I have to leave the European Union?
Well, rhetorical questions aside, there are no surprises here from the European Commission.
Link via World Watch Daily.
I do not believe that I was entirely convinced by the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, that the bureaucracy can be trusted to safeguard our liberty… I believe that, beyond anything else, the preservation of liberty is the business of Parliament and of others who are not concerned with government or, in other ways, with the powers in the land. They must ensure that this critical part of our being a free and worthwhile nation is preserved.
When we consider legislation which, in particular, poses a danger to liberty, we must not give the Government blanket permissions; we must justify each and every trespass. We must ensure that the Government do not only do things because they can but that, when they do things, they are effective. We must also ensure that the Government consider all possible ways of achieving the same end without the diminution of our liberty.
It is common that authorities do things because they can or that they choose to do the things that they can do rather than the things that are important.
– Lord Lucas in Security and Liberty debate in House of Lords, 26th March 2003
Link via FIPR
In Malta the use of ID cards is regulated by the Identity Card Act first enacted in 1976.
Typically, they were introduced as a way of addressing a very specific concern (in our case, it seems to have been the concern over the possibility of electoral fraud) and slowly, but surely, they gained a more widespread use as more and more Government departments introduced them in their transactions with the public.
Here’s an example I can distinctly remember. Fifteen years ago when I was doing my O-levels you were issued a temporary identification document by the Examinations Department. Your official ID card was given to you only later when you turned 16. Then in 1993 the Act was amended so that an official ID card would be issued to all those aged 14 or older as a way of including those students sitting for their ‘O’s. And today, teenagers who are too young to work legally or to sign contracts have to have an official ID card.
It was all done in the name of ‘convenience’ and could anyone possibly be against that? I have been socialised into this system and its convenience and I know that when I encounter officialdom I either pull out the ID card from my wallet or else chant my name and the six digits and a letter that make up my ID to the public official who asks for it. It has become an automatic reflex.
Recently a very minor and a not untypical incident served as a bit of an eye-opener. I was driving back home in the early hours of morning when I happened to encounter a police roadblock. I slowed down and the policeman signalled me to pull to the side of the road. This I did. He took a look at me and my car, noted nothing suspicious and politely asked me for my name and ID number which I gave in a typical knee-jerk reaction when asked this question by a public official. He took note and signalled me to move on.
It was while I was driving away that the question popped in my head: what was the purpose of asking drivers for their ID number at a roadblock when there was nothing that was suspect? And I could not answer that question. The policeman probably could not either. In my case giving name and ID on being asked to do so by a public official has become automatic. In the case of the police officer (and in the case of all public officials) asking the question has also become automatic.
The use of ID cards has become so generalised and they have become so deeply ingrained in our culture that nobody notices. They have become an ordinary part of our everyday lives. Now it is whoever queries these practices who is made to feel awkward, as if he were a paranoid nutcase. In 1976 when the law was introduced there were a few voices, however feeble, who protested; now there are none. And that is what is scariest. Living in an environment that requires official identification all the time is bad enough. Living in an environment that requires official identification and subtly pressuring you never to question such practices is much, much worse.
As Gabriel Syme wrote earlier today, the objective on this blog is to argue for a ‘broad front’ push to regain some ground lost to successive governments in the struggle for individual civil liberties. But as a hard core free market individualist who opposes collectivism in all its left and right flavours, it would fair to say that when I write for Samizdata.net, I tend not to make many friends amongst socialists, social democrats or statist conservatives.
And yet… on White Rose I try to leave some of my narrow political views at the door as the aim here is about forming a much broader front in the resistance to the diminution of individual liberty. Gabriel was right to point out the excellent article by Stephen Robinson in the Telegraph in praising left winger John Wadham for his stewardship of the human rights group Liberty.
I have recently been taken to task by libertarians and conservatives for praising George Orwell, because he was a socialist. Yet it would be hard to overestimate the importance of 1984 and Animal Farm in estabishing a popularised meta-context in which the true nature of tyranny could be understood by millions of people across the world. It is my desire that people reach the conclusion that the state is over-mighty and that its actions pose a clear and present danger to individual liberty… I am far less concerned how they reach that conclusion. If Orwell felt his socialist collectivism could be squared with an abhorance for tyranny, well fine. I may not see it that way but Orwell made many of the right arguments nevertheless. We must take our friends where we find them.
The need to resist the tide of the regulatory state’s smothering of individual rights has appeal far beyond the narrow confines of libertarianism or any particular -ism, and if we are to ever roll back the trend towards a panoptic micro-regulated ‘society’, to quote Benjamin Franklin, we must hang together, or surely we will hang separately.
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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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