Liberty Alone

There’s been much outcry about this proposed database of staff dismissals and allegations (quite rightly) but its been claimed that that it is a private sector project.

According to the BBC this is not so:

The register is an initiative of Action Against Business Crime (AABC), which is a partnership between the Home Office and the British Retail Consortium.

So its the public sector in collusion with aspects of the private sector (although can this really be called the private sector if its relying on government support?).

Another point is that this will surely leave the door open to defamation cases. I’m sure unions and other groups would help fund action against an employer who put information on the register. (As an aside, this is the sort of thing unions should be doing, defending the rights of their members through the legal system).

(HatTip: Tim Worstall at The Business (or Spectator as it now seems to be)

Having opposed Bush’s plans for wire tapping and claimed they would repeal such powers, the Democrats are now seeking to extend that power (NYTimes, use bugmenot.com to get a username and password).

This seems to be a case of getting a whiff of power and wanting to use it. They probably assume that soon there’ll be a Democrat in the Whitehouse who will obviously only do good.

Admittedly they’ve made a few superficial moves towards improving the situation, but the fact remains that secret wiretaps without a warrent will be available to the NSA for even longer. It represents an extension of federal power and an erosion of civil liberties.

The Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. They want just as much bigger government and government intervention, they waste as much money when it comes to pork-barreling. The difference is they wrap their mendacity up in fluffier terms than the Republicans.

It seems everything is depressing for liberals at the moment.
We have the smoking ban infringing on property rights.
We have the EU advocating internet censorship and looking towards China for ideas.
The new Criminal Justice Bill seeks to make ‘offensive images’ illegal - no matter how they were created. This is now well into the realms of thought crime.
That beacon of freedom, the USA, is sliding ever more towards authoritarianism, following our descent.
The US congress has failed to back opening up immigration more and is adopting an ever more protectionist stance (more proof that the Democrats are no more liberals than the Republicans).
There’s the usual calls for ever more power to detain without charge and suspend habeas corpus.
There’s an increase in intolerance and bigotry even within the Anglican Church.
Not to mention long term concerns about ID cards, state surveillance through traffic cameras and road charging, the ever increasing state and its increasing theft of money through taxation and regulation.

About all that is going right is that we’re not in France, Russia or Zimbabwe.

The BBC is reporting the release of a new privacy report by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The line Tony Blair and other technocrats should take on board is:

No technology is 100% perfect, and no engineer will tell you that any technology is 100% perfect

Another interesting idea is that the biometric data in new passports could be used to trigger targeted attacks. Since these passports use RFID for contactless reading, they are vulnerable to being read at a distance as has been demonstrated many times now.
This could be used to detonated a bomb when particular people are near it, or when people from a particular country are nearby.
The more data held on passports, or ID cards makes this sort of targeting easier, it also makes tracking of people far easier. Either by government services or by criminals or even private detectives (although such methods may be illegal, that will not stop people).

Privacy and identity have taken on a new importance recently. It used to be understood that the state and others would not pry into your private life, but today the state is seeking more control over our identities (and therefore our lives) and to reduce our privacy. We leave much more information about ourselves and our actions behind, although it is currently difficult to link all this together, new technology is being deployed to make the task of linking up our data and discovering habits and movements much much easier.

This may be of benefit to the state and its organs, but the benefit to individuals is at best hazy, at worst there is a large negative impact.

Liberalism needs to start taking these threats seriously and developing a response to such power grabs by the state. We need to articulate a vision of individual rights and responsibilities only regulated by the state to prevent harm to others to combat the vision of the ‘beneficial state’ which attempts to solve all our problems through technocratic measures and decreased individual freedom.

These are one of the ‘crime fighting’ and ’safety’ measures being proposed as reported here.

I am speechless. This is unbelievable. I know this government’s mental health agenda is disastrous and dangerous for those who are mentally ill, but this takes the biscuit.

Not only is it based on a totally untrue characterisation of mental illness I don’t think its stretching it too far to draw similarities between tagging homosexuals (especially considering many, even today, still believe homosexuality is a mental illness) or even a religious group.

It may be more hi-tech than a visible badge, but its just as insidious. RFID is readable at a distance, but not a great one. What other purpose could it serve than legitimising discrimination? Firstly through the health services (where discrimination already occurs at times) and government agencies but expanding to private individuals as the technology to read the chips becomes more readily available.

How about this for an extension of the principle:
Everyone who is diagnosed with an STD is given a chip, because there have been a few cases of people deliberately infecting others with their STD. Then everyone can have a reader to ‘check’ someone they are about to sleep with. It will protect them from harm, it must be good.