PRISM story tops the day

The story shared by the Washington Post and the Guardian of how the US security services enjoy unhindered access to the internet activity of the customers of the world's largest internet corporations should surprise no one. If you weren't already aware that every single word you type on that keyboard is known to some security official somewhere you should be. US security officials have responded by calling the reports 'irresponsible' - not untrue, note - and claiming that the US's security has been damaged by disclosure that the government is snooping on everyone's email. 

It's not just the septics, of course. Our own MPs, both Tory and Labour, are pushing for even greater access to our private information under a new 'snooper's charter' but at the same time seeking to restrict radically our access to information on their own pay and expenses, and our ability (through Leveson) to share information on their badger-watching activities or to share photographs they have posted of themselves in their underwear or dressed in rubber or leather harness.

And at a time when we've lost not only Tom Sharpe but Oliver Bernard, the last and most human of the three brothers. I remember too fondly an afternoon session in the French back in the 90s with Dan Farson, Sandy Fawkes and both Bruce and Oliver - in reality the invective was poison - all of whom are now dead. I mention this only because they shared a common loathing and mistrust for anyone who presumed to know better than they what was good for them - including the presumptive and impertinent interference by the government in our private affairs. Still, the revelation that it is the US that is the world's first Police State fills me with hope; if there's a people anywhere in the world who will not stand for this, it's the Americans.  

Running amok

Running amok in Malay, or spree killing in US, or beserking in Norse, is hardly a new phenomenon, and not confined to any single culture. Following a period of depressive or dissociative brooding, an individual arms themselves and embarks on a series of killings and attempted killings. It may be a single episode of violence if the weapon is an edged blade or suchlike - where the perpetrator is immediately proximate to the act, and can be himself killed or restrained - or over a longer period using a firearm if the perpetrator can evade immediate capture. Women never run amok; it's always men. Raoul Moat, the Washington sniper, Thomas Hamilton, Anders Breivik are just a few recent cases. And now Mohammed Merah in Toulouse.

The trigger for this behaviour can be anything from an unjust parking ticket to a sophisticated ideological self-delusion, a bad divorce, a bollocking from the foreman. You simply can't predict it. Yet governments will continue to want to try; they prefer to understand these mentalist episodes as 'lone wolf terrorist attacks' and search for group memberships and affiliations. Der Spiegel falls straight into this trap today, declaring "A man like Mohammed Merah is Western law enforcement's worst nightmare. The suspected perpetrator of the Toulouse attacks fits into the "lone wolf" category of terrorist."

But law enforcement agencies feel obliged to be responsible for such events happening, and always respond with "If only ...". If only we had access to everyone's emails, twitter posts, nectar cards, bus tickets, dvd rental records, radio listening habits, web surfing histories they say, we could better predict such behaviour. But of course they can't. Where the trigger can be as minor as a Kiwi barman short-changing them, leading them to assault the whole of Earl's Court with a samurai sword you can just never predict it.

Malays have long learned to accept the risk of being killed by someone running amok as part of normal life. They would, I'm sure, regard police roadblocks and metal detectors at the entrance to every market as an unwarranted intrusion on daily life. Let's not allow Merah to be the excuse for ever more intrusive State surveillance.

ACPO, Crapita, ACRO, NPIA, the CRB and the ISA - do they own us?

Disentangling the shadowy relationships between this series of non-accountable semi-private or private bodies is not easy. You have identified in your comments below that both Crapita and ACPO are set to benefit by the new bonanza of fees from the new compulsory PaedoChek® laws - but getting the information is another thing. All information on this topic has previously been blanked by government departments under an FOI exemption, such as this below;

It would not be in the public interest to disclose information that could prejudice the commercial interests of Capita, the CRB’s private partner. The current contract with Capita is due to expire in 2012 and work is now taking place to ensure that the necessary supplier partnerships are in place leading up to this time. Capita consider that release of this information may prejudice their interests when looking to re-tender for the contract.

And don't look to ACPO for any information - it claims FOI immunity on everything. ACPO in fact has its own 'Cabinet' as well as a full 'Council' that makes decisions about criminal records without any reference to our democratic representatives. And did you know that the government recognise that ACPO actually 'own' all the criminal records in the UK? I bet you thought since these had been paid for by our taxes that we, the public, owned them. Wrong. New key players on the scene are ACRO - the ACPO Criminal Records Office, and the ISA - the Independent Safeguarding Authority, who will collect tens of millions in fees for the others. The 'Independent' ISA is run by, erm, an ex-member of ACPO - Chief Executive Adrian McAllister. Here's a summary of how things work;

ACRO was created following an agreement by the ACPO Cabinet. Once ACPO Cabinet had agreed to ACRO’s creation the ACPO Council then agreed that all 43 forces would fund ACRO. Ministers were not consulted on the setting up of ACRO. When set up, ACRO’s purpose was to fill a gap in the ability of the police service overall to resource a range of police activities particularly the need to provide operational support and guidance to all police forces in England and Wales on matters relating to police records on the PNC and the linkages between such records, DNA and fingerprint information.

Your third questions concerned “permission” given by the Home Office for ACRO to use PNC data. Each force Chief Constable owns the information they put onto PNC for their force area. ACPO as a body represents all 44 individual forces in England & Wales and Northern Ireland, and therefore is the representative owner of all PNC records. The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) manages the PNC equipment and makes this information available, but does not own the actual data. ACRO, as part of ACPO can, and does, have access to all PNC records for the policing work that it provides to forces and other agencies. Its Police Certificates business is charged in a similar manner to other agencies that use PNC data for vetting purposes. This was done to ensure no unfair advantage was provided to any one agency or department.

The Criminal Records Bureau was set up under Part V of the Police Act 1997. This defined its role as the provision of criminal record certificates for individuals seeking employment in the United Kingdom. This remains the CRB’s purpose. The CRB was not consulted on the setting up of the ACRO Police Certificates service.

So you thought you could escape it all by leaving the country, eh? Well, not without a Police Certificate, you can't - issued by, er, ACRO.

King Charles I thought he could subvert Parliament by such mechanisms as 'ship tax' - taxes that could be levied without any democratic accountability. It cost him his head. If you're as disturbed as I am by the words "the ACPO Council then agreed that all 43 forces would fund ACRO. Ministers were not consulted on the setting up of ACRO" - and ask where was the debate in the House, where was the consent of our elected representatives in Parliament to all this, then you are asking the same questions that our forebears asked about three hundred and seventy years ago. It took a civil war to put that one right.

State Security - it's not just us, then

Proof, if it were needed, that events such as the Convention on Modern Liberty have brought together concerns on both the left and right of the political spectrum about the EU origin of much of what we regard as oppressive and intrusive interference with our freedoms comes in an excellent analysis by Statewatch of the return of the German internal State Security architecture to something not seen there since 1945.

Germany has already abolished the privileged status of journalists. Only clerics, defence lawyers and politicians are exempted from 'casual' (i.e. non-targeted) electronic interception and surveillance. German bloggers, of course, have no protection.

Read it, and be very afraid.

Tom Harris and Jack Straw please note

Tom and Jack love their garden. "See how the high walls protect all the flowers and plants" says Jack. "See how the nets protect the pretty flowers" says Tom. But the bees that buzz from flower to flower can't get through the nets. The birds that eat the bugs that eat the flowers can't get through the nets. And the high walls block out the sun, so the flowers and plants shiver in the cold dark soil, and die.

Tom and Jack love their garden. "See the bare earth" they say. "See how the high walls and the nets protect the bare earth."

"Until now the government has by and large scorned the civil liberties lobby, seeing it as a peripheral and largely irrelevant fetish of the chattering classes. That arrogant disregard for democratic principle has been uncovered. The call for liberty is rapidly migrating from the margins to the mainstream of politics, and it is time for the government to listen." - Observer

How many more serious voices will it take?

There are on the political left many naive but well meaning souls who simply can't understand all the fuss about civil liberties. Suckled at the teats of the State, the belief that it's fine for the State to use any degree of power because it's for our own good is in their bones. So far they've dismissed a vast national groundswell of disquiet as 'crankish' or the concerns of the 'tinfoil cap brigade'.

Today the ex-head of MI5 condemns Labour's intrusive State and the news leads the BBC's broadcasts.

The International Committee of Jurists has also just condemned the application of terror laws in the UK and the US.

And the House of Lords published a considered and well-reasoned opinion that damned Labour's Surveillance State.

How many more serious voices will it take before those naive do-gooders on the left who deny that there's anything to worry about actually start to use their little grey cells?

The tinfoil-cap brigade are no longer those who condemn our country's transformation into a Police State, but those who continue to deny it.

Facial recognition and doppelgängers

I know I bear an uncanny resemblance to at least two people I've never met. Or it might be the same person.

The first time I was made aware of this was in an obscure south London pub a few years ago. A bloke approached our small group with great familiarity but it was my shoulder he squeezed and me he greeted with a grinning "Allright, mate; how's it going"

"Um, very well, thank you" I replied with creased brow, suspecting some upcoming request for money 'for a cup of tea'. A few more words were exchanged.

"It is you" he declared. "You work behind the jump at the Old Donkey".

"Um, no, I'm sorry. You've mistaken me for someone else." He was clearly unconvinced, and getting angry that I was perpetrating an unreasonable joke on him.

The second time was on a train to Lewes. A couple in their sixties in the seats opposite whispered and then smiled and nodded at me in a way that said unmistakeably 'we know who you are'. They didn't look as if they would frequent the Old Donkey, wherever that was. I smiled back. The Mrs ventured "Are you going to do any more adverts?".

There was nothing I could say that would convince them I wasn't an actor who was currently appearing in a TV advert. It would have been easier for me to admit that, yes, it was me, and that my agent had a few things lined up. It would have made them happy. My refusal to admit any relation to the person they were convinced I was irritated them. I think the phrase 'Too good for the likes of us" was murmured and the time between East Croydon and Lewes passed in a glacial agony of avoided glances.

Perhaps my south London barman had turned to acting. Or perhaps he was already an actor just doing bar work. Or perhaps it was two different people. Who knows.

Are machines any better at facial recognition than human beings? The roll-out of FRT to every high street CCTV camera will be here by the end of the decade.

I can only hope the acting / barkeep business continues to pay well, and that my doppelgänger never feels the need to turn to bank robbery.

..... Nanny is getting cross

News this morning that car drivers caught using a mobile phone will face two years in jail because "using a mobile is more dangerous than drunk driving" brings a smile to my face. When Nanny brought in the law requiring us to wear seat belts in the back seats, as a nation we ignored it. Except for strapping in the kids. The police can't be bothered to enforce it.

The same has happened with mobile phone use. We've just carried on using them, perhaps tucking them out of sight if a police cruiser passes. The British people have made their own decision about the risk. Nanny isn't happy.

The reaction of an authoritarian regime in decline is always the same; a spiral of ever more repressive government measures is met by an increasing public determination not to recognise their legitimacy. They're braiding the rope for their own nooses.

Civil disobedience - is it still possible?

I've been thinking for some time of a range of measures that could be taken across the country that would inconvenience and disaccommodate all those behind the 3,000 new laws since 1997, the criminalisation of the middle classes, the ugly and abhorent manifestations of a police state. Such measures coming generally under the heading of 'civil disobedience'.

Because we're a law abiding people, it couldn't involve breaking any laws. The personal cost must be minimal.

And then I thought, even advocating that people think about civil disobedience might already be illegal under the terror laws.

Passport renewal - a reminder

Although I've got about four years left on my passport, as soon as the kids are back in school I shall be renewing it. With a nine month credit from my current one, it will give me until about June 2018 without being treated like a common criminal by the government. This news today in the Grauniad that passport applications in the near future will need us to give all ten fingerprints for the government's database.

Ignore the opinion poll, Mr Cameron - this one's a matter of principle

The most recent yougov poll for the Telegraph gives results, in response to the question '..detain terrorist suspects for as long as police need to carry out their enquiries as long as adequate judicial safeguards are in place', of 74% in favour and only 17% opposed. I think that as with many poll questions, respondents were answering a different question to that asked. I think respondents were answering the question 'given that radical Muslims are the greatest domestic threat today, are you in favour of the police locking as many of them up as possible?'.

Common sense tells us that there is considerable public anger against a situation that allows mainly Pakistani second or third generation immigrants, who have enjoyed all the benefits of a liberal welfare democracy, turning to a primitive and superstitious radicalism alien to our relaxed social philosophy. Having the police rough them up a bit, chuck them in vans and bang them up in bleak cells is a gut reaction.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has found that there is 'no evidence' that extending the detention period beyond 28 days would have any beneficial effect whatsoever. Not one suspect who has been arrested and subsequently released would have been charged had a longer detention period prevailed. So far, 28 days has proved perfectly adequate.

Our real failure is over the admission of email and phone intercept evidence in court. Everyone knows the security services, police and GCHQ are doing it. Such evidence would, contrary to increased detention, actually help to secure charges and convictions. Our failure is nothing more than our traditional Whitehall constipated obsession with 'secrecy', which in the past has covered everything from the number of tea-bags purchased annually by the Ministry of Agriculture to the brand of toilet paper used by the Welsh Office.

Any extension of the 28 day limit is a further creep towards detention without trial. The Scots can do what they like, but this move has no place in our English nation and must be opposed with vigour. It's a matter of principle.

Ah well, back to the old days ... or not

When I first started sailing, the procedure for leaving and entering the UK on your own boat was fairly simple. You had to fill in form C1331 and pop it in the special post box on the wall of your local port customs post before you left. When you returned, you had to call port customs on VHF. You could moor your vessel, but otherwise no-one could leave the boat for an hour after tying-up. If no customs officers arrived, after an hour you were free to disembark. We used to obey this quite religiously; moored on some lonely east-coast creek with the lights of the pub in sight, we would obediently huddle in the cockpit for the prescribed hour, with not another human being in sight. That's being English, I suppose.

Our semi-Shengen arrangements in recent years have meant that if sailing to and from other EU nations, you don't need to notify anyone in the UK at all. Just come and go. The French of course still preserve the old civilities, and when the French border police board you (as they will) on arrival (a) it is perfectly normal to offer the officers a small glass of red wine each (b) you will be expected to produce Certificate of Registration, passports, International Certificate of Competence, Insurance documents, radio apparatus licence, radio operator's licence and of course the vessel's log-book, properly completed in ink and not pencil. Friends have found a small rubber stamp and ink-pad inscribed with the boats name and registration number also engenders a small frisson of excitement amongst these gents; they will solemnly produce one of their own, and a small satisfied flurry of mutual stamping will occur (c) at this stage, it is again normal to offer the officers a refill of red wine, which they will graciously refuse.

I have found these arrangements not to be onerous. Generally relaxed and good-humoured, it does give the impression that the French are serious and professional about these things. Yet if travelling by ferry, until recently it was unusual to find even a single French border official on duty at the major ports. Strange.

I suppose it's inevitable that Brown's announcement that every person entering and leaving the UK will be security checked will extend to the half a million pleasure craft in private ownership in the UK, although without re-opening customs posts in scores of minor ports it's difficult to see how this will be done. Oh yes, I forgot. This is Brown's Totalitarian Britain. He will simply forbid us from leaving UK territorial waters at all.

When would you have said 'It's time to leave'?

The Times reports today that one of Blair and Reid's last acts will be to introduce 'wartime' stop and question powers for the police. This is being presented as a further safeguard against terrorism, but of course the police are not well known for their sense of discrimination in the use of 'anti terrorist' powers, unless you include an elderly holocaust survivor roughed up by Blair thugs, or a woman reading the names of the Iraq war dead, as terrorists. The police will of course use the new power to stop and question anyone on a trawl basis; I'll bet motorists will form a large proportion of those interrogated under this provision.

Blair also accuses those such as me who put civil freedoms before the fear of terrorism of making a 'dangerous misjudgment'. Ah yes. This is the same Blair whose judgment over every single critical security issue over the past ten years has been fatally flawed. Well, Mr Blair, some of us are not driven by your particular brand of naive narcissism, are not as dangerously self-deluded as are you, and appreciate that the value of civil freedom has a price that includes the risk of being murdered by terrorists.

The Observer reports that the police also want to extend the taking of DNA samples to everyone convicted of non-recordable offences - everything from dropping litter, dog fouling, speeding or not having a TV licence. One peer is even proposing that all DNA samples taken from new-born babies are added to the national database.

Perhaps we should all also turn up to have our skulls measured and answer long questions about our racial origins.

2007 also marks the 70th anniversary of the opening of Buchenwald. Today the name symbolises the horror of totalitarianism, but at the time Germany was told that the nation was menaced by Communist and Bolshevik terrorists, and it was necessary for national security to lock a number of people up under 'preventive detention'. No doubt politicians in Germany in 1937 accused those who opposed such measures of making a 'dangerous misjudgment'. And the building looked quite benign - how bad could it be? Amongst the German middle classes looking at press photos of the facade of Buchenwald, some will have commented "It's like a holiday camp. Too good for those criminal elements."

And one final snippet. A low-key police organisation was quietly set up last year; the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre. In German the words would all be joined together. This unit already has powers to order the indefinite detention of those it considers mentally unstable and potentially dangerous. Without needing the evidence required for a criminal conviction.

So when would you have decided to leave Germany? 1934? 1937?
Or would you have stayed?

Why the Judges are right

That the Adam brothers and Bullivant, three 'suspected terrorists', have violated their control order is hardly surprising. That John Reid wants to use the opportunity to declare a State of Emergency and suspend habeas corpus altogether in the UK, as reported in today's Guardian, is not surprising either.

The Judges struck down the government's introduction of indefinite detention without trial, and did so quite correctly. The executive should never have the right to jail people without a hearing. We learned this lesson in Northern Ireland many years ago. The government introduced control orders with the intention of them failing; they needed something to enable them to say "See, we were right; we need 90 day arrests without charge, detention without trial and other draconian powers". That Reid is following the script and calling for, in effect, martial law in the UK is therefore unsurprising.

This latest attempt by this government to browbeat and bully the judiciary must also fail. If the Adam borothers and Bullivant want to go to Iraq to fight British soldiers, fine - let them go. We have existing legislation of long standing to deal with persons who fight against this country; we hanged William Joyce and John Amery for less within living memory.

I'm afraid I would rather risk a terrorist bomb in central London than this socialist rubbish taking Emergency Powers.

Judges get serious - constitutional crisis looming?

The Magistrate's Blog reports today on an exceptional communication today from the Lord Chief Justice to all members of the judiciary. This must be a matter of national concern; rarely has such a fundamental disagreement between the executive and the judiciary in this country erupted so openly. The evidence given by their lordships to the Lord's Constitution Committee is HERE, including the Judicial Position Paper that Lord Phillips refers to in his extraordinary letter to judges and magistrates.

The issues are these. The government has designed a new Ministry of Justice on the back of a fag packet and brought it in virtually overnight. The intention seems to be to amalgamate the budgets for courts and prisons, so that if the civil servants need more money for prisons they can close courts. Or vice versa (but unlikely). It also seems to be strongly suggested that judges should consider the availability of prison places when passing sentence - a consideration wholly absent from English law. Overall, the government's intention seems clear. And it is bloody serious. It is, in my view, to utterly undermine the constitutional position of the judiciary as a separate part of government, make judges into civil servants answerable to and appointed by the executive and thereby to politicise justice in the United Kingdom.

Now, our judges may come in for much stick for some of their judgments; my consolation is that they are more often a thorn in the side of ministers than an outrage to me. Ornery, bloody-minded, individualistic, contrary old buggers they might be. But they form our last line of defence against the iniquities of a police state, the loss of freedom in this nation and in the preservation of that justice and equity that has ruled our society in these islands for a thousand years.

I for one stand solidly with them in this matter. I urge you to do likewise.