Magna Carta Plus News

This article from Tech Week Europe suggests that despite scrapping the National Identity Scheme and Contactpoint database, the coalition are actually expanding the “database state”.

The most notable examples are the new electronic records system for the NHS where patients records are uploaded without consent and made widely available to NHS staff and the proposals in the Communications Data Bill which are very similar to Labour’s Intercept Modernisation Program, though there is more than just these examples.

To quote:

It all points to a situation where little has changed. And MPs are fretting about how the Tories are pushing for an expansion of the database state, rather than slimming it down. “It is clear that Conservative ministers have in many cases not learnt from the Labour errors, and, egged on by the Labour party, are pushing for some illiberal policies,” Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge, tells TechWeek.

“There is still far more for liberals and Liberal Democrats to be vigilant over. There is no doubt our task would be easier if more MPs were more digitally literate.”

As indicated by Nick Clegg’s outrage over the Communications Data Bill last year, the Tories moves to expand the state’s control over people’s information is causing another rift between the two parties of the Coalition.

Whether citizens are content to let the database state grow inexorably, or are irate about their information being lumped online without being asked, it’s clear the government is lying. And at a time when trust in politicians is appallingly low in Britain.

Equally concerning is that the Coalition has rehashed many of Labour’s much-derided schemes of the 2000s, perpetuating the database state set up by its political adversary. Or as French novelist Karr would have had it, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Big Brother Watch, via a FOI request made by HMP Britain, have found that 7.6 billion journeys have been logged by Britain’s Automated Number Plate Recognition camera network. In response to a question about how long the data is retained for the reply stated:

ANPR read data is stored only for as long as is operationally necessary and not routinely more than two years.

Big Brother Watch reports:

As reported on the Register, more than 300 MEPs in the European Parliament are set to lobby the EU to keep a log of every internet search made in Europe, under the dubious logic of cracking-down on paedophilia.

The Guardian reports:

Counterterrorism police have targeted hundreds of surveillance cameras on two Muslim areas of Birmingham, enabling them to track the precise movements of people entering and leaving the neighbourhoods.

The project has principally been sold to locals as an attempt to combat antisocial behaviour, vehicle crime and drug dealing in the area. But the cameras have been paid for by a £3m grant from a government fund, the Terrorism and Allied Matters Fund, which is administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

About 150 automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) cameras have been installed in Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook in recent months. Birmingham’s two predominantly Muslim suburbs will be covered by three times more ANPR cameras than are used to monitor the entire city centre. They include about 40 cameras classed as “covert”, meaning they have been concealed from public view.

See this report from Big Brother Watch and this article from Heresy Corner.

From Section 10 of the coalition agreement between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats:

The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.

This will include:

• A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.
• The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.
• Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
• The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
• Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
• The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.
• The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.
• The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
• Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
• Further regulation of CCTV.
• Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
• A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

If they’re as good as their word, this will be a promising start to ending and reversing the onslaught on civil liberties Britain has seen over the last 15 to 20 years or so.

Over at my personal blog, I cover Labour’s misleading claims about the DNA database and plans to restrict the retention of DNA of those arrested but never convicted of an offence.

Over at my personal blog, I argue that Gordon Brown is wrong to use the Jeremiah Sheridan case to justify retention of those arrested, but not convicted of a crime.

The Telegraph recently reported:

Controversially, managers have also been told to pass on names of staff they have prevented from working with vulnerable people for fear they could “pose a future risk” - even though no incident has occurred.

Guidance seen by The Sunday Telegraph, which has been given to more than 100 case workers at the ISA reveals that those referred could be permanently blocked from work if aspects of their home life or attitudes are judged to be unsatisfactory.

It says case workers should be “minded to bar” cases referred to them if they feel “definite concerns” about at least two aspects of their life, which are specified in the document.

It means, for example, that if a teaching assistant was believed to be “unable to sustain emotionally intimate relationships” and also had a “chaotic, unstable lifestyle” they could be barred from ever working with children.

If a nurse was judged to suffer from “severe emotional loneliness” and believed to have “poor coping skills” their career could also be ended.

ISA’s case workers, who have no minimum qualification or experience, make their decision about whether someone should be barred from working with children or vulnerable adults without ever seeing the person.

The Telegraph reports:

Currently returning officers only require an adult at an address to certify that the people living in the household are over 18 and can vote.

However, after July electoral registration officers will be able to ask all householders to hand over three “personal identifiers “ - their signatures, dates of birth and NI numbers - as part of a new “individual elector registration” (IER) scheme, along with names and addresses.

There are fears that this could be expanded to include identity cards and even people’s finger-prints because of a special allowance in the legislation used to bring in the change.

The new way of registering to vote could be compulsory within five years. A briefing note from the Electoral Commission says: “IER is expected to replace the current practices of household and rolling registration by July 2015”.

There are already concerns about the plans. The Association of Electoral Administrators suggested that some of the extra information could be sold to anyone who buys copies of the electoral register.

John Turner, the association’s chief executive, said: “People should have concerns if their personal data is made available for anyone with a big enough cheque. The more personal data on the register, the more sensitive they will become.”

Campaigners questioned whether it was worth the risks of storing this extra personal information to deal with what they said was the relative small problem of electoral fraud.