Yet There Is Method In It

The UK Liberal Democrats are proposing what I think is a dream legislation on civil liberties. I can’t help smiling when I read the list of measures. If we live in an open society, all these civil rights should be a matter of course.

In a more philosophical sense, these reforms can avoid the concept of “natural rights” by considering they are “rights of the state” over the individual that must be abolished.

* Scrap ID cards for everyone, including foreign nationals.
* Ensure that there are no restrictions in the right to trial by jury for serious offences including fraud.
* Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square, at the heart of our democracy.
* Abolish the flawed control orders regime.
* Renegotiate the unfair extradition treaty with the United States.
* Restore the right to public assembly for more than two people.
* Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
* Strengthen freedom of information by giving greater powers to the Information Commissioner and reducing exemptions.
* Stop criminalising trespass.
* Restore the public interest defence for whistleblowers.
* Prevent allegations of ‘bad character’ from being used in court.
* Restore the right to silence when accused in court.
* Prevent bailiffs from using force.
* Restrict the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes and stop councils snooping.
* Restore the principle of double jeopardy in UK law.
* Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
* Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.
* Scrap the ministerial veto which allowed the Government to block the release of Cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war.
* Require explicit parental consent for biometric information to be taken from children.
* Regulate CCTV following a Royal Commission on cameras. Lib Dems

Basically a work of genius But the existing powers that be are likely to resist this attempt to moderate their influence…

Anti Citizen One

There are interesting happenings on the terror front:

“We want to move away from just challenging violent extremism. We now believe that we should challenge people who are against democracy and state institutions”, he [a Whitehall insider] said. BBC

Interestingly, it is legal to hold views that are anti-democracy and anti-state. My worry is what does “challenge people” mean in this context? Pressure people to avoid conservative preachers? This is similar to having black lists of people suspected of being anti-government (and McCarthyism) and since “challenge” probably does not mean legal sanction, the people who are black listed have no legal recourse in the case of false accusation.

This ties in to the view of a study by the International Commission of Jurists. The use of extra-legal measures against society are the biggest menace to our “open” society.

Mr Chaskelson, chairman of the panel, said: “In the course of this inquiry, we have been shocked by the extent of the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counter-terrorism measures in a wide range of countries around the world.

“Many governments, ignoring the lessons of history, have allowed themselves to be rushed into hasty responses to terrorism that have undermined cherished values and violated human rights.

“The result is a serious threat to the integrity of the international human rights legal framework.” BBC

This also agrees with a former head of MI5.

“It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism – that we live in fear and under a police state,” she said. BBC

The two things we need to consider in a response to terrorist threat are:

• Is the mere accusation of terrorism being used to silence rational debate by assuming the guilt of the accused?
• Do the proposed measures mitigate or aggravate the problem? What evidence supports this claim?

I have to think about the curious case of Geert Wilders

Anti Citizen One

On BBC’s question time:

Goldsworthy: How far is he [Hoon] prepared to go to undermine our civil liberties to protect us… [from terrorists?]
Hoon: …To stop terrorists killing people in our society, quite a long way.
[and later]
Host: The words Julia [Goldsworthy] used were “undermining peoples civil liberties”. You said you would go quite a long way to undermine people’s civil liberies?
Hoon: Because the biggest civil liberty is not to be killed by terrorists.

Now I would grant that the right not to be killed is a human right. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” But it is not correct to put this single natural right over the others in the way Hoon argues. With this logic, all the other rights may be abridged to serve the right “not to be killed by terrorists”. If anything, staying alive is less important than the other civil rights. As Patrick Henry said, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”. If you don’t have the other civil rights, some might think it justified in risking one’s own life to achieve civil rights – this is the case of revolutionaries, freedom fighters and “terrorists”.

I notice that article 12 begins “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy….”. I guess one way to get around this right is to attempt universal surveillance so no individual can claim their privacy was arbitrary violated?

Anti Citizen One

Plans to extend pre-charge detention from a maximum of 28 days to 42 were defeated in the Lords by 191 votes. BBC

They still plan to introduce it if there is an emergency – which means civil rights can be abridged when inconvenient for the state. Keep paying attention to this.

I doubt we will be needing this power anyway.

AC1

Update 21/10 UK’s top prosecutor warns against growing state power

Several very interesting news items:

“A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.” Interesting state and religion issue. SFGATE

UK Government proposes wide reaching surveillance powers to investigate … well anything. I expect we will soon be given a helpful reminder by an anonymous camera operator when I forget to turn the oven off. I am now thinking the balance of power to the government from the individual is getting extreme. Individual rights are fraying at the edges and are almost torn apart. PCPRO

China: where an application to hold a protest is met with arrest for “disturbing social order”. BBC

Interesting piece on atheism in the US – The Guardian

And a subscription only news item, the New Scientist had a issue exploring the boundaries of reason. I have not finished reading all of it yet!

AC1

The government should adopt a Bill of Rights for the UK, a cross-party committee of MPs and peers has urged. BBC

I cautiously welcome this idea but I hold many reservations. If the present UK government has such a feeble grasp of human rights, how can they hope to advance this cause?

Building on existing protections is a noble aspiration which will be difficult to fulfil as long as so many other politicians denigrate our existing Bill of Rights – the Human Rights Act – in thought, word and deed. Shami Chakrabarti

The shadow home secretary has resigned in an apparent attempt to throw down the gauntlet over the governments 42 day detention without charge. Although this is a highly original political move, it has the same air as Monty Python’s Judean People’s Front.

Suicide Squad Leader: We are the Judean People’s Front crack suicide squad! Suicide squad, attack!
[they all stab themselves]
Suicide Squad Leader: That showed ‘em, huh?

I can’t blame them for trying.

In a similar battle against the US political majority, Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich recently called for the Senate to impeach Bush. Political observers do not expect this action to make headway and the resolution has been sent to committee as a delaying tactic.

The problem is the US senate (and the UK parliment) mainly supported the Iraq war and are hardly likely to approve an investigation that might expose their flaws. Since there has been an election in both countries, they know there is no great public pressure to force the issue. The UK government defeated a similar attempt to launch an inquiry into the Iraq war in March 2008.

Anti Citizen One

It strikes me that several recent government policies have been concerned with resisting a decline in our “way of life”. Security, the economy and our personal welfare are all held by governments as something that is already good and must be protected from immigration, terrorism and violent crime. This view tends to see the world as a place that has no room for improvement and as decline which must be prevented. We are then victims of outside sinister forces. We are almost presented with the choice:

1) To surrender to external forces and see our way of life change.

2) To fight change and maintain the status quo.

The paradoxical (and ironic) problem with resisting change is that to resist, we must already accept change to a way of life!

I will give you an example: fundamentalist terrorists wish to undermine the open society and impose a totalitarian government – all aspects of people’s lives are centrally controlled. The way we are fighting this is to centralize power and rip up the open society! Recent instances: surveillance, long detention without trial, supporting extraordinary rendition, alienation of minority communities and curtailing individual freedoms. All these activities as the characteristics of what we are supposedly resisting.

Surly the best way to resist this trend is to strive for the opposite society is to do the opposite? We should increase transparency of government and police, increase personal freedoms, involve minority communities in government, and encourage personal responsibility over reliance on a father figure government. We can fight terror best by ignoring it. Terrorism is a propaganda tool to force political change. A propaganda tool is defeated if it is ignored. The impact of terrorism can also be reduced by designing infrastructure to be distributed and redundant.

Anti Citizen One

A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word “cult” to describe the Church of Scientology.

The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion.
…
Writing on an anti-Scientology website, the teenager facing court said: “I brought a sign to the May 10th protest that said: ‘Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.’ The Guardian

The mind boggles. Under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1985, “a person is guilty of an offense if they [...] display any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby”. The word cult, in this context, is a critical term but also it is the central point of the protest. Does that mean all criticism of “new religious movements” (the non-perjorative term) is illegal? Based on the police action, the answer seems to be YES.

The police clearly over stepped their bounds and authority – the teenager has something known in subversive circles as “legal rights” under the “European Convention on Human Rights” (section 10 if you are interested). Secondly, criticism as part of a peaceful protest is not “threatening, abusive or insulting”.

The police should ask for the prosecution to be dropped and issue guidance to all officers as to what is “threatening, abusive or insulting” to prevent this happening in future. Remember tolerance does not mean refraining from criticism.

Anti Citizen One

Misplaced fears about terror, privacy and child protection are preventing amateur photographers from enjoying their hobby, say campaigners. BBC

“Jacqui Smith is to press ahead with moves to hold terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge despite the growing prospect of defeat on the measure.” Independent

I now have to address: what is the purpose of counter terrorism? Current trends would seem to indicate that its purpose is to resist political influence by terrorists. Apart from the danger of self identifying as victims (“potential terrorist targets” – see Slave Morality) this definition also can lead to being reactive, not proactive, to terrorism. For a resistance against a force to exist requires a force to be applied.

A more robust policy might be to allow that “people can go about their business freely and safely” (UK Home Office) or in “Preserving our Freedoms” (US Department of Homeland security). Apparently both these organizations apply these definitions without irony! Current trends indicate law enforcement calling for increased powers to “fight terrorism” without proper scrutiny. For example the FBI impeded their own investigation to give justification to have expanded powers. In the UK, local government put a family under surveillance to see if they were cheating school catchment areas (using powers that were justified by more serious situations).

If the law enforcement bodies actually worked toward their ideal of “preserving freedom”, then it is clear that the best – or at least better – reaction to terrorism is to ignore it at a social level and NOT to curtail civil rights. Call me crazy but wasn’t terrorism illegal before 2001? Like in the IRA campaign? (Obviously we need a new enemy to worry about since the end of the cold war. Read your Orwell.)

We live in a three way struggle – individual, state and terrorist. Individuals surrendering all responsibility to the state just don’t want to be free? What we need instead is a massive decentralization of infrastructure so any terrorist attack has reduced effect. I was reading in the New Scientist that the highly interconnected world (i.e. globalised and centralized) may be susceptible to a pandemic induced collapse of the civilization rather like the Roman Empire.

Anti Citizen One

PS See I did not even mention Nietzsche in one post…. D’OH!
PPS I wonder how long before terrorists target celebrities – that would probably cause the most anxiety in the TV viewing nations.