Liberty Alone

From SpyBlog I see that the government is trying to pass its ‘abolition of parliament’ act again.

Given this allows a minister to alter any Act of Parliament without any debate.

Surely this is equivalent to the Enabling Act? It allows a minister to change any piece of legislation, a power which could be used to modify legislation to give the power to enact legislation without it passing through Parliament. It could even be used to remove the need for Royal Assent.

Whilst I doubt that the current government wishes to use the powers quite like that (preferring to alter things like detention without trial and the National Identity Database no doubt), such powers should never exists in anything close to a liberal constitution.

We have a housing shortage, its serious, so why on earth is the government proposing letting councils build homes?

Government is bad at doing most things and there’s nothing to suggest that building houses is any different.
What can councils do differently to solve the problem? The only thing I can see is give themselves planning permission more easily, but if they’ll give themselves permission why not private concerns?
Councils will not be allowed to develop land anywhere other than where building is already permitted, there’s simply no advantage to councils building homes.

The outcome of this will be councils borrowing money, getting into heavy debt and then not redeeming the revenue leading to even greater burden on the tax payers (and less money for the individual to spend on housing thus exacerbating the problem even more).
If private companies lose money on a project it doesn’t matter so much, the investors who risked their money on the project lose out, but they voluntarily invested, the tax payer however is forced to invest in government projects.

If we want to subsidise housing for the poorest then lets give them money to spend on housing. The council house system removes any sort of incentive to look after the property you’re living in, at least with privately rented property you run the risk of eviction and charges for damaging property.

Spy Blog has drawn some worrying conclusions from recent attempts to discredit Ross Anderson a security expert from Cambridge University.

The allegation is the information being used to try and discredit Professor Anderson could only be gained from illegally accessing private emails.

Ross is an excellent security analyst, he’s unfailingly spoken out against security flaws he’s discovered, even under threat of legal action from vested interests.
He’s very much concerned with the societal effects of technology and privacy and is Chair of the The Foundation for Information Policy Research, a position which has seen him come into conflict with government over technology and privacy.

Its disgusting that the government should seek to undermine academics in such a way because they happen to disagree. I suppose its just the flip side of government funding of academia though, especially employing suitable ‘right thinking’ academics to bolster their position.

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.

Its funny how if a company sponsors research people are often so skeptical (rightly so) but people are often so trusting of government sponsored research.

This report helps illustrate why we should also be skeptical of government funded research. Funding is being withdrawn from a study into childhood obesity, a study which is producing results which contradict the government’s answers.

When Exxon sponsor research we naturally look at their motives (although the habit of rejecting research because it might be sponsored by Exxon is not good- check the work in a skeptical, scientific manner). We should do the same for government research. We should do the same when Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth produce research, or Oxfam or any group be they company or charity.

All these groups have one thing in common - they have aims which they are trying to further by publishing research. They may not deliberately suppress contradictory research, but they will give out summaries and press releases which justify their position, they will often have preconceptions when commissioning research.
That is why peer review is so necessary and why the current consensus on climate change and the vitriolic defense of the status quo is harmful.

I’ve just heard Matthew Taylor (Blair’s ex-advisor not the LibDem MP) on the radio talking about trying to include people in local government and politics.

He misses the point entirely, he keeps on talking about ‘persuading people to act wisely’. Why should government persuade people to act wisely? How on earth can government decide what that is?
This is the same old paternalistic authoritarianism hiding behind a mask of participation and localism.

Perhaps we can welcome the fact that they realise that there’s a disconnect between government and people and that government cannot do everything, but to assume that government knows what is best, it just needs to persuade people to ‘do the right thing’ is wholly wrong.
People must be left to make their own choices and to take responsibility for them. Government should protect that right, not seek to manipulate it.

Alex at Love and Liberty has an excellent post on the rule of law and why Labour just doesn’t believe in it - and why we need it.

Simply put is that there is a combination of the old socialist utopianism which has driven many leftist regimes, they are building a utopia, nothing should get in the way of that, the ability to reject principles to gain and then maintain power the New Labour project brought to the Labour Party and finally Tony Blair’s messianic zeal and unrelenting belief in his own rightness.

These combine to create what we see now - a government with no regard for the rule of law and the protections which that affords people.

Alex puts this better than I do, go and have a read.

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.

The recent government proposals to raise the smoking age to 18 expose the lack of principle and the illiberal outlook of this government and raises difficult questions around responsibility and the nature of adulthood.

Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance highlights the nature of this government in the press release made on this issue. Rather bluntly he says:

We note with some amusement that in Tony Blair’s New Britain, a man may sodomise a schoolboy in a public lavatory, and the police must look the other way; but if he gives the boy a cigarette afterwards, he will soon be committing a criminal act.

The press release goes on to say the former (with consent naturally) is a good thing, however the way it came about, and the reasons for the proposed raising of the smoking age are for the same reasons, not some ideological reason, but the government prostituting itself to special interest groups in the hopes of gaining votes, and probably money (although I doubt they’d be so stupid to make any deal on these grounds).

Quite rightly, the gay lobby argued for equalisation of the ages of consent. The fact that this is a liberal position to take however meant nothing to the government, they simply want the good press.

Similarly, although wrongly, various lobby groups, including medical professionals (who increasingly take the view that they are the guardians of our health and lifestyles) argue for increasing the smoking age. True, they mean well, but it is not the government’s job to tell us what to do with our own bodies. When they do this, we start to become possessions of the state and not free individuals.

There is no liberal argument for raising the age limit for purchasing cigarettes. Some will try to argue that its for people’s own good, but the government should not be saying what we may or may not do for our own health. Others will try to argue that it costs the NHS money. Well, cigarettes are taxed heavily, isn’t that money meant to be for the NHS to offset the costs to it of smoking (this leaves aside the fact that the NHS is illiberal).

Even if you did argue for it on health grounds and advocated government intervention in our personal lives, this is an inconsistent argument. Sex can be very dangerous to your health, yet we trust 16 year olds to be able to decide whether to have sex and how to do it if they do. We allow 16 year olds to join the army, a job which almost certainly risks your health and even your life.

This leads onto the question of responsibility and adulthood. Colin Ross makes good points on his blog about this. We have no clear definition of what we can or cannot do. Responsibilities which come with adulthood are spread around, arbitrarily, over many ages. Colin summarises these, revealing many I didn’t know existed.

Surely, if someone is responsible enough to know that having sex with someone under the age of consent is illegal they are responsible enough to have sex? If they’re responsible enough to smoke, why not drink? Why not drive? Or vote? If I’m considered responsible enough to decide to fight and possibly die for my country, why can’t I vote?
This area is ripe for discussion, I don’t know what the answer is, except surely we should have an age at which a person is considered an adult and has the responsibility which comes with it. The only reason to have such variegated age limits is to deny responsibility to young people which just feeds into a culture of irresponsibility, fueled by numerous other governmental initiatives to remove personal responsibility and create state dependence.