Liberty Alone

Reason brings some speculation over less well known pardons by former president Clinton to my attention.

President Clinton pardoned some Puerto Rican terrorists for no apparent reason. It is claimed that the reason was to boost Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Senate.
Pardoning terrorists, outside of a peace deal, is a worrying event and doesn’t exactly give good signals to other terrorists, but to do so for electoral reasons is very worrying.

Clinton’s pardons are recognised as sleazy, along the lines of Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby, but this stretches my cynicism of politicians to the limit… do politicians really play games like this for electoral advantage?

Thankfully, it seems as though Clinton won’t be benefiting from this largess now as Puerto Rico looks set to pledge all its delegates to Obama.

From Index on Censorship I hear that five students gaoled over jihadist literature have had their conviction quashed.

This is good news. In absence of any evidence of involvement in a terrorist plot these students were persecuted for what amounts to thought crime, an act which probably further radicalised others around them.

I do not doubt that there is a terrorist threat, but such an assault on freedom of speech, expression and thought is not the way to deal with terrorism.

US small government pressure group Downsize DC have launched a rather good campaign - I Am Not Afraid.

They are calling for people to refuse to be afraid, as many have pointed out, by being afraid and acting rashly through fear we are handing victory to the terrorists.

This is not a new call, security expert Bruce Schneier has been calling on us to refuse to be terrorised, but it is good to this attitude being publicised by a more ‘conservative’ pressure group.

(I also like the campaign to get legislators to read bills before they vote on them - we need that here in the UK too).

Despite what seems to be the best efforts of our government and the US government to increase hatred of the west, it seems that Al Qaeda’s support amongst muslims is falling.

Perhaps this is what is behind the latest video (supposedly) from Osama Bin Laden complete with Marxist anti-capitalist rhetoric, he’s hoping to convert western leftists to the cause (hopefully it will just be the likes of George Galloway who fall sway to this, he is missing a dictator to have a love in with…).

This is good news though, the best way to combat Al Qaeda and other extremists is from within the muslim faith, aided by trade and prosperity for muslim countries to combat the poverty many people find themselves in.

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.