To critics it sounds like a scenario from some Orwellian nightmare.

An online database of workers accused of theft and dishonesty, regardless of whether they have been convicted of any crime, which bosses can access when vetting potential employees.

But this is no dystopian fantasy. Later this month, the National Staff Dismissal Register (NSDR) is expected to go live.

Organisers say that major companies including Harrods, Selfridges and Reed Managed Services have already signed up to the scheme. By the end of May they will be able to check whether candidates for jobs have faced allegations of stealing, forgery, fraud, damaging company property or causing a loss to their employers and suppliers.

Workers sacked for these offences will be included on the register, regardless of whether police had enough evidence to convict them. Also on the list will be employees who resigned before they could face disciplinary proceedings at work.

And who’s behind this? The AABC, a group set up under a partnership between the Home Office and the British Retail Consortium:

The register is an initiative of Action Against Business Crime (AABC), which was established as a joint venture between the Home Office and the British Retail Consortium “to set up and maintain business crime reduction partnerships”.

To be fair to the Home Office they say they’ve stopped funding this group.

I’ve also tweaked sections related to the status of the scheme, to include information about the recently leaked Home Office document that suggested a change of plans is in the offing.

• Back in October, the Pub Philosopher pointed out how Britain’s new religious hatred law is beginning to bite:
  

  A number of people have already posted about Father John Hayes, the priest who was interviewed by police on suspicion of inciting racial hatred, after he expressed views about religious dress and radical Muslims in his parish newsletter. Esmerelda wondered whether, given that Father Hayes’s comments were made over a year ago, someone was taking advantage of the new Religious Hatred Act to make their complaint.

  This may give a clue to the response of the police. Usually, the police would look at the evidence in a complaint and then decide whether they thought a crime might have been committed before taking any further action. The problem is, you can’t do that with the Religious Hatred Act.

  Read Section 29B. It says:

  A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred.
  
  And you can’t work out what someone’s intention was without talking to them.

  To establish whether Father Hayes had broken the law, the police had to judge whether he was a rabid Muslim-hater, hell bent on stirring up a religious war, or a harmless parish priest engaging in theological debate. Presumably, the senior officer who picked up this case decided that the only way this could be done was by sending two coppers to interview Father Hayes.

  As I said last year, this is one of the most worrying aspects of the new law. It is up to the authorities to decide what they think you meant. They can, if they choose, infer meanings from your words that had never occurred to you when you wrote or said them.

  The letter which led to Father Hayes being interviewed can be found here.

  This shows how laws that restrict what people can say can be used to intimidate someone via the mere threat of a prosecution, by someone who might simply dislike what the person said. This can have just as big an effect on free speech as any actual convictions brought under the such laws and such threats can be used without the speech concerned necessarily being proscribed by such laws.

• Apparently, it is illegal for pub landlords to put up signs saying “FAGGOTS & MINCE NOT ON THE MENU”.
• The Pub Philosopher has been pointing out how the idea of “inciting religious hatred” has been lifted from western countries and applied elsewhere, with results such as the teacher Gillian Gibbons charged (in Sudan) with inciting religious hatred for naming a teddy bear “Mohammed” (this charge was dropped though), the Turkish publishers of Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” being charged with “inciting hatred” and with Islamic countries pushing for both the UN and EU to ban the incitement of religious hatred. He finishes:
  

  Accusing people of incitement to religious hatred, when they have simply been critical of Islam or have inadvertently offended the faithful, is now a common tactic. This verbal sleight of hand has its origins in the West but it has been eagerly appropriated by the reactionary bigots throughout the Muslim world, so that a publisher in Turkey, a teacher in Sudan and a priest in east London can all be accused of incitement to religious hatred by people who really just want to shut them up.

• A Canadian lawyer Faisal Joseph has brought a case against Mark Steyn over an article where Steyn is critical of Islam. According to the Economist:
  

  The piece, an excerpt from Mr Steyn’s book “America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It”, was notable for its simplistic demographic projections—Yemen (population 22m) will outnumber Russia (141m) by mid-century, he wrote confidently—and for the reaction it generated. Maclean’s published 27 letters, many of complaint. That was not enough for some offended Muslims. Last spring a group of Toronto law students marched into the magazine’s offices demanding equal space for a rebuttal by an author of their choosing. Ken Whyte, the editor and publisher, told the group he would rather see Maclean’s go bankrupt.

  Last month the students and the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), a lobby group, filed complaints against Maclean’s at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as well as those of Ontario and British Columbia. The article, the CIC claimed, harmed Muslims’ “sense of dignity and self-worth”.

  Their choice of forum has brought protests. The criminal code has hate-propaganda provisions, but using these requires convincing a prosecutor. The bar is much lower for Human Rights Commissions and their tribunals. These were set up to deal with discrimination on grounds such as race or sex in jobs, housing or services. Even the man who inspired them, Alan Borovoy, a civil-liberties lawyer, is dismayed at their misuse to limit free speech. The tribunals can only levy small fines and give an order to desist. But the proceedings involve steep costs for defendants, whereas plaintiffs pay nothing if the commission decides there are grounds to proceed.

• In a controversial case in Britain, Samina Malik, the “Lyrical Terrorist” has been found guilty of “possessing records likely to be used for terrorism”. According to the Telegraph:
  

  Police were alerted after finding an email from her on another person’s computer.

  When they raided her home, they found folders on the computer called “Samina’z Stuff” and “Copy of Handbooks” as well as dozens of handwritten notes hidden in the pages of a book and a bracelet which carried the word jihad [holy war].

  On a mirror were found the words “Lyrical Terrorist” and on one piece of paper she had written: “The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom, the need to go increases second by second.”

  In her poems she wrote about killing heathens, adding: “Kafirs your time will come soon, and no one will save you from your doom.”

  Police found a copy of Osama Bin Laden’s Declaration of War and a passage in which she praised the al-Qa’eda leader and added: “We will not let you have any peace. We will show no remorse, no mercy and no regrets”

  In one poem, called “Raising Mujahideen [holy fighter] Children,” she recommended indoctrinating children from the age of seven, adding: “Show the children videos and pictures of mujahideen and tell them to become strong like them.”

  Explain how the Mujahideen fear no man - they fear Allah alone, and for his sake they are able, willing and capable to do anything in defence of Islam.” Malik joined an extremist organisation called Jihad Way set up to disseminate terrorist propaganda and support al-Qa’eda.

  On a website called Hi-5, similar to social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace, Malik listed her interests as: “Helping the mujahideen [holy fighters] in any way which I can… I am well known as lyrical terrorist.”

  It seems to me that in this case, Malik was at minimum inciting terrorism (i.e. inciting violence) and thus the point that freedom of speech reaches its limit when you incite violence applies. However this view is not shared by others. I intend to discuss this case in more detail later.

• Back in November, the British government proposed extending the incitement to racial and religious hatred laws to cover inciting hatred against homosexuals, the disabled and transsexuals. Extending the law to cover inciting hatred against homosexuals is already part of the Criminal Justice Bill currently going through Parliament. Tim Worstall points out that all three groups are currently protected by laws against inciting violence:
  

  OK, all of that I understand and indeed agree with. It is, as he says, depressing. The bit I don’t understand is this:

  Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, has told MPs that such fears are unfounded because he will shortly introduce an amendment to the Bill ensuring that cases can be pursued only when the offending words are specifically intended to pose a threat and are not merely humorous, mocking or abusive.

  What’s the point of that? As a lawyer, surely Straw knows (he’s the bloody Lord Chancellor so we do hope he does know) that we already have a blanket law about incitement to violence. So why do we need a law about incitment of violence to gays, the disabled or the changelings? It’s all already covered so why bother?

• The Oxford Union caused a stir when it invited BNP Leader Nick Griffin and “revisionist” historian David Irving to a debate on free speech. Naturally there were those who were opposed to this move and demonstrated against it, and there were those who defended the move on grounds of freedom of speech. For the moment I’ll limit myself to the following points:
  • Freedom of speech includes the right to invite someone to speak at an event you’re organising.
  • Freedom of speech does not include the right to a platform, but if someone offers you a platform you have the right to accept it (though you may be bound by any conditions attached), no matter how odious your views are.
  • People have a right to object to your decision to invite odious person X to your talk. You have the right to invite them nevertheless.
  • People do not have a right to prevent your talk/debate from going ahead by storming your platform or blocking people from coming to see it/join.

  I intend to discuss this topic again in more detail later.

• The United Nations as adopted a motion calling on countrys to outlaw “defamation of religion”. According to the Pub Philosopher:
  

  While most of us were occupied with our preparations for Christmas, the United Nations passed a resolution calling on member states:

  [T]o provide, within their respective legal and constitutional systems, adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions, to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and their value systems and to complement legal systems with intellectual and moral strategies to combat religious hatred and intolerance.

  The resolution was proposed by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference which has been pushing for legislation against insults to Islam since the Danish cartoon row.

  As you might expect, the only religion specifically mentioned in the resolution is Islam.

  The resolution was passed by 108 to 51.

• abelard reports on the case of Lionheart, a British blogger, currently abroad, who is threatened with arrest under the racial hatred laws when he returns to the UK. Brian Micklethwait, at Samizdata, has some doubts about what’s going on, but other bloggers regard the case as an attack on free speech. Having looked at the blog myself, I’m inclined to agree that he should not be facing legal action for what he has posted there.
• Samizdata report that the US state of Oklahoma is not merely silencing critics of the Oklahoman government but sending them to jail for ten years. The crime of which they’ve been convicted: Circulating a petition without being a resident of Oklahoma!
• Samizdata also highlights the case of a euthenasia campaigner arrested in New Zealand.
• Al-Jazeera reports that Belarus has jailed the editor of a paper that published the Mohammed Cartoons for 3 years for inciting religious hated.
• Yet again, someone receives death-threats after making comments critical of Muslims/Islam:
  

  Threatening phone calls were made to the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali after he wrote that non-Muslims faced physical attack if they entered some Muslim-dominated enclaves.

  He has taken police advice on his security after he and his family received death threats but is said to be “continuing as normal”.

  Bishop Nazir-Ali said in a statement on his website last night that he did not intend to offend Muslims, but to demonstrate that the policy of multi-culturalism had not worked.

  “The purpose of my article was to point out that the best way for welcoming and integrating newer arrivals in this country should have been a Christian vision of hospitality and not the secular policy of multi-culturalism which has led to such disastrous consequences,” he said.

  He said Christian converts found it difficult to live in some areas while Christian workers were unable to practise the full range of ministry.

  However, he added: “I made clear in the article that my comments were about the particular impact of Islamic extremism and were not about Muslims in general.”

  Bishop Nazir-Ali said that since the publication of his article in The Sunday Telegraph, he had received about 1,000 letters, 95 per cent of which had been supportive.

  “On a personal note, I am sorry to say that since the article appeared, threats have been made against the safety of my family and myself and have had to be reported to the police,” he said.

• On my personal blog, I argue that the refusal of a visa to Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is not an attack on freedom of speech.
• Finally, I must mention Harry’s Place who have been running a series of posts about Sayad Parwez Kambaksh, a 23 yr old Afghan who has been sentenced to death for distributing a paper critical of Islam. From their first post on the matter:
  

  Journalists, and the National Union of Journalists, should be campaigning to save the life of this man.

  An Afghan court on Tuesday sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam, an official said.

  The three-judge panel sentenced Sayad Parwez Kambaksh to death for distributing a paper that humiliated Islam, said Fazel Wahab, the chief judge in the northern province of Balkh, where the trial took place. Wahab did not preside over the trial.

  Kambaksh’s family and the head of a journalists group denounced the verdict and said Kambaksh was not represented by a lawyer at trial. Members of a clerics council had been pushing for Kambaksh to be punished.

  The case now goes to the first of two appeals courts, Wahab said. Kambaksh, who has been jailed since October, will remain in custody during appeal.

  Wahab said he did not immediately have the details of the paper that Kambaksh circulated, other than that it was against Islam. Kambaksh discussed the paper with his teacher and classmates at Balkh University and several students complained to the government, Wahab said.

  Kambaksh’s brother, Yacoubi Brahimi, described Tuesday’s proceeding as a “secret trial,” saying the family did not know it had been scheduled. Some have accused Kambaksh of writing the paper in question, but Brahimi said that his brother printed it off the Internet.

  Since this post, Harry’s Place has reported that reported that the International Federation of Journalists have been urging Hamid Karzai to overturn the death sentence, the campaign has been picked up by the Independent and an online petition set up with over 63,000 signatories at this time of writing and a protest outside the Afghan embassy took place in London on Friday. An Afghan government official has apparently said Kambaksh will not be executed.

• Back in December, NO2ID launched a new pledge. They explain the pledge as follows:
  

  You might be prepared to go to gaol rather than have an ID card. But you can’t.

  David Blunkett has been smugly pronouncing that there will be no ID card martyrs because the intent is to have a system of penalties – like monstrous parking fines – hard to contest in court. So further punishments would relate to failure to pay, not ID cards. That silly distinction is currently irrelevant, since powers of direct compulsion have been dropped, for now. It hasn’t stopped Mr Blunkett repeating it, though.

  Subtler minds have been at work. The Home Office plans to make you to “volunteer”. It hopes almost all the population will “volunteer”, before most people have even noticed what is happening. Well before it rounds-up and force-fingerprints a few pariahs. Official documents will one by one be “designated”, so that you cannot get one without at the same time asking to be placed – for life – on the National Identity Register.

  The civil servant, Sylvanus Vivian who originated this idea in 1934 – yes, that’s right, nineteen thirty-four – called it “parasitic vitality”. In other words, the scheme is a vampire. It has no life of its own, and thrives only if it feeds.

  They later outline the pledge itself, consisting of actions that will remove the scheme’s “parasitic vitality”, if enough people carry them out:

  “I solemnly and publicly promise that:

  • I shall not register for a national identity card
  • I shall not supply personal details or fingerprints to a National Identity Register
  • I shall not apply for any document or service if joining the National Identity Register is a condition of obtaining it
  • I shall not co-operate with any Identity and Passport Service interview concerning my identity

  I also promise by my example to encourage others to do the same.”

• Both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly have both passed motions declaring that they will not require the use of the identity cards for the public services under their jurisdiction. In the case of the Scottish Parliament this reaffirms a motion passed back in 2005 prior to the Scottish election of 2007.
• Two recent opinion polls have reported that more respondents are opposed to ID cards than in favour:
  • Back in December the Telegraph reported on a You Gov poll showing 48% opposed to 43% in favour.
  • And on the 6th February, the Guardian reported on another poll from ICM, showing 50% opposed, 47% in favour, with 25% strongly opposed, and a majority expressing concerns about data sharing.

  Clearly the recent scandals involving loss/theft of personal data from various government departments, sometimes on a large scale, has shaken public confidence in the scheme.

• The Register reported recently that both Accenture and BAE have pulled out of the project:
  

  The UK ID card project suffered another serious blow today with news that two potential suppliers have pulled out of the procurement process.

  Accenture and BAE Systems have both decided not to chase contracts for the controversial scheme. A short list of possible suppliers is due to be published in the next few months but several firms have expressed discontent with continued government indecision. This blog post might just explain Accenture and BAE’s early withdrawal.

  Accenture, one of the government’s central IT suppliers, told the FT it was pulling out for a mixture of “political and commercial reasons”.

  A BAE spokesman told El Reg: “We have withdrawn but it’s for commercial reasons - at this stage our assessment is that our bid wouldn’t deliver everything the project requires. We will continue to monitor the project with interest.”

• The leaked Home Office document that was behind the stories commented on in this earlier post of mine, has now been put up on the web, and at this time of writing can be found here, here, here and here.
• One of the stories to come out via the leaked document, is the possibility of the fingerprint database being dropped (after years of successive Home Secretaries telling us the biometrics are the key the system’s security). The Register discusses this issue here:
  

  A key component of the UK ID card scheme, the central database of fingerprints, may be abandoned, according to a leaked Home Office document obtained by the Observer. The document doesn’t suggest entirely scrapping fingerprints, but instead suggests that their value should be assessed for each group of the population enrolled.

  So how does that work? Well, for the ID scheme as originally planned, it clearly doesn’t. From David Blunkett onwards Home Office ministers have presented biometrics as the system’s USP, the one single factor that makes it entirely certain (in their view) that you are who you say you are. And, they have claimed, the ability to check those biometrics against a central register would give us the ‘gold standard’ of identity. But if you don’t necessarily collect everybody’s fingerprints, then you don’t have a complete national biometric register, so you might as well save yourself a pile of money, chuck away any notion of online biometric checks as a matter of routine, and forget any ideas you still had about a national biometric register.

  Quite a few of the claimed ‘benefits’ of the ID scheme go out of the window if you do this. The police cannot trawl the register in order to match crime scene fingerprints, nor can they use their mobile fingerprint readers to identify you or to prove that you are who you say you are. Effectively, the ID card would be chip-backed picture ID, with the security of the chip only of value in circumstances where a reader was used.

  See also UK Liberty’s take on this.

• But then again, maybe the fingerprint database isn’t going to be dropped?
• Finally, when the Tories pointed out that people may have to commute long distances to get to the interview centres Mr Eugenides illustrated just how bad this situation could be for some:
  

  The true insanity of the scheme is demonstrated most starkly by the fate that awaits the good people of Orkney and Shetland – some 40,000 souls in all. There are apparently to be no processing centres for ID cards on the islands – any of the Scottish islands, as far as I can see – and so every single inhabitant of Orkney, Shetland and all the others is going to have to go to the mainland to be registered.

  The nearest centre is in Wick, which is nearly 200 miles away from Shetland. But it’s not too difficult to get there. From Shetland’s capital, Lerwick, simply hop on a ferry to Kirkwall in Orkney (7 and a half hours), then it’s a short bus transfer to Burwick (45 minutes), a ferry across to John O’Groats (45 minutes) and another bus to Wick (about an hour). But make sure you don’t show up at lunchtime; there’s usually a queue.

  OK, I’m being a wee bit disingenuous. You can fly to Aberdeen in only an hour. Why not book flights for yourself, your spouse and two kids and make a wee holiday of it (if a day in Aberdeen can be called a holiday)? Well, the bad news is that if you want to go next Monday, Expedia are currently quoting £1,236.80 for the privilege of taking your family to be barcoded. All of which puts the cost of ID cards in stark perspective. Still, it’s cheaper than not going at all; a fine of up to £1000, denial of access to government services and all the rest of it. No, suck it up, citizen; this is the future, and there are no exceptions for the old, the infirm, the sick and the lame.

From a report in the Telegraph:

The security of the online computer system used by more than three million people to file tax returns is in doubt after HM Revenue and Customs admitted it was not secure enough to be used by MPs, celebrities and the Royal Family.

Thousands of “high profile” people have been secretly barred from using the online tax return system amid concerns that their confidential details would be put at risk.

From this year, anyone wishing to file a self-assessment tax return after October will have to do so online or face stiff penalties.

However, HMRC has a list of those excluded from the new rules who must send hard copies of returns for “security reasons”.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to use the electronic system to make the Jan 31 deadline this week.

Tax records contain bank details, national insurance numbers, salary and details on investments and savings - all valuable to fraudsters.

On Friday, senior accountants said they had concerns over the security of the system - apparently confirmed by the Revenue’s secret policy.

Mike Warburton, of the accountants Grant Thornton, said: “Either the Revenue have a system which can guarantee confidentiality for all or they should defer plans to force online filing. It is extraordinary that MPs and others can enjoy higher security.”

Mark Wallace, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “This double standard is unacceptable. If the online system is not secure enough for MPs, why should ordinary taxpayers have to put up with it?”

This is of course the same HMRC who lost 25 million child benefit records. Why should anyone, famous or otherwise, trust these people or their online system to keep their personal data safe?

• ID card scheme put off until after election (The Guardian);
• ID cards for student loans (The Scotsman); and
• Identity cards: Dead, or just sleeping? (The Economist).

So what is going on? Has the scheme been delayed? Has it been extended? Will it be shelved?

To answer these questions one has to start with what what the plan was prior to the leaking of these documents. The plan, prior to these leaks, was as follows:

• ID cards would initially be issued to foreign nationals starting in 2008, and to British citizens from 2009 onwards when they apply for/renew passports. Eventually ID cards would be made compulsory and issued without needing to apply for a passport. All this is explained at the Identity and Passport Service website.
• An “opt out” allowing people to opt out of getting the card when applying for the passport was secured during the passage of the bill through Parliament. However personal details would still be stored on the National Identity Register and the opt out would last only until the cards were made compulsory in 2010 (see this Home Office press release for details).

Note however that compulsion requires new legislation and thus the possibility of this time-table slipping was always there. The 2010 deadline is not part of any existing legislation.

The recent reports have made the following claims regarding the scheme:

• The issuing of ID cards to British citizens will be delayed until 2012. For example, a report in the Telegraph states:
  

  Amid growing doubts that the multibillion pound scheme will ever see the light of day, a confidential Home Office report suggests that the widespread introduction of cards for British nationals will not come until 2012 at the earliest.

  That is two years later than the Government has previously stated.

• Students will be required to register on the NIR and get a card from 2010, in order to get loans and bank accounts. For example, this Guardian article states:
  

  Students will be “blackmailed” into holding identity cards in order to apply for student loans, the Tories have warned.

  According to Home Office documents leaked to the Conservative party last night, those applying for student loans will be forced to hold identity cards to get the funding from 2010.

  Anyone aged 16 or over will be expected to obtain a card - costing up to £100 - to open a bank account or apply for a student loan.

• Those applying for driving licences will have their details put on the NIR. The Telegraph article linked to above states:
  

  The Government has said it plans to make ID cards compulsory, but only after a “voluntary” period during which anyone who renews a passport or driving licence will be automatically issued with a card.

• Those employed in “sensitive” positions or positions of trust (e.g. teachers, doctors, civil servants) will have to register and card a card from 2009, e.g. according to the same Telegraph article:
  

  The leaked Home Office document makes clear that some British nationals like teachers and care workers could get cards as soon as next year.

  An ID card could be made a requirement for holding a job in a “position of trust” such as teaching or social care from 2009.

  It says: “Our first priority should be to issue cards to those who are employed in positions of trust where identity assurance is critical to determining their appropriateness for that employment.”

Assuming these reports accurately portray a change in the plans, it appears that instead of the issuing of ID cards to passport applicants starting in 2009, extending to all applicants in 2010 with compulsory cards for all a few years later, we now have a plan involving:

• Issuing of cards to British citizens starting in 2009/2010 with students and people in positions of “trust”.
• The issuing of cards to passport applicants from 2012 onwards and possibly also to those applying for driving licences.
• Compulsion some years later.

Thus the issuing of cards to passport applicants has been delayed, along with compulsion, but in the meantime the government will try and get students and certain professions registered instead, whilst adding applicants for driving licences from 2012 when passport applicants are now also required to get a card. Thus the scheme appears set merely to creep along at a slightly slower pace than before.

Of course all this assumes the government elected in 2009 or 2010 will continue the scheme.

Under S45, the prosecution has to show that you BELIEVED that the anticipated offenced WOULD occur and that you BELIEVED that your act WOULD assist or encourage its commission, thus establidhing[sic] Mens Rea.

Without S47, the judge could direct the jury to return a guilty verdict. With S47, if you demonstrate that your act was reasonable, the judge should direct the jury to return a not guilty verdict.

I do not agree that the conditions in S45 are necessarily sufficient to establish mens rea. I raise two counter points:

• Firstly, why provide the defence in S47 if the conditions in S45 are sufficient to establish mens rea?
• Secondly, consider the following. If I sell a knife to you there’s a risk you might use it to commit an offence. Of course knowing there is this small risk does not imply that I believe you will commit the crime and my selling a knife to you in the absence of any reason to believe you will commit a crime with it is unlikely to meet the conditions in S45.

  But suppose I sell knives to the general public. If I sell a large enough volume of knives it’s virtually guaranteed that one or more of them will be used to commit a crime. Therefore isn’t anyone selling knives to the public, on a scale large enough that its virtually guaranteed that some of the knives will be used in crime and who also realises that fact, in a position of (a) believing that offences will occur and (b) believing their actions will assist in their commission?

  Now of course section 47 can be used by anyone selling knifes to argue that their actions are reasonable — one would hope a court would agree that it’s unreasonable to prevent people from selling cooking utensils after all!

  But my point is that a person in this position has the burden of proof reversed. It should be the up to the prosecution to prove negligence or recklessness on the part of this knife seller, not the knife seller to prove his actions were reasonable. And in this case it seems to me that the conditions in S45 do not establish mens rea.

  Note that similar arguments to the above could be applied to selling cars, computers, hammers, tools, software or just about anything!

Looking back I think one of they key developments of 2007 in Britain has been the increased awareness of the dangers of the database state, in the wake of numerous stories about how various departments of the British government have lost personal data, had it stolen and/or seriously mishandled it (e.g. sending unencrypted CDs through the post). The government has shown, beyond reasonable doubt to many people, that they cannot be trusted with our personal data.

As a consequence recent opinion polls have been showing a majority of people are now opposed to the national identity scheme. Given that this scheme involves collecting and sharing personal data on a far wider scale than is done currently, it is only logical to expect even more scope for the loss/abuse of personal data arising from the scheme. This point now seems to have penetrated the public consciousness. This development could spell the end of the identity scheme and make it harder for the government to pursue other schemes that involve collecting and sharing vast amounts of personal data. I hope it does.

On the civil liberties front more generally, there are of course many more developments that need to be fought, such as the extension of pre-charge detention and other draconian measures. For the first time, it seems to me that the public are becoming aware of the dangers of what’s happening. Hopefully this will help to prevent further losses of liberty and further erosion of the rule of law.

• In May this year, A hard drive turned up on eBay that contained data about children adopted and fostered by Southend Borough Council.
• Also earlier this year, a hard drive containing NHS patient data turned up on eBay.
• In October, former police officers were recently jailed for unauthorised access to the Police National Computer.
• Earlier this month, HM Revenue and Customs lost a CD with the details of thousands of Standard Life’s pensions customers when it was sent by post to Standard Life’s offices in Edinburgh. It never arrived.

Note that this is a topic I have covered before, the following list summarises the events previously reported:

• Between 2004 and 2006, 1,500 passports handled by the Home Office went missing, with a total of 35,000 going missing over the 5 years to 2006.
• Organised criminals managed to steal 1,500 staff identities from the Dept of Work and Pensions, identities which they then used to commit tax credit fraud.
• Also at the Dept for Work and Pensions, some civil servants were found to have sold the details of hundreds of thousands of people to criminal gangs.
• The DVLA has been caught selling personal details to private companies, some of whom went on to extort people.
• Also at the DVLA, a member of staff sold personal details to animal rights activists who then terrorised people.
• Inmates at a young offenders institute in Reading were accidently given the personal details of the prison warders.

Clearly, the government cannot be trusted with our personal data.

Finally, a comprehensive list of data abuse stories (including commercial cases) can be found at UK Liberty’s data abuse page.