Category Archives: LDV campaigns

Campaigns being run by Liberal Democrat Voice

Labour and their big databases

By Ryan Cullen | Published 11th April 2010 - 9:22 am

People often wonder why the Liberal Democrats are opposed to having large centralised databases containing every piece of information about you that you may have once mentioned.

However today’s Sunday Times leads with this story:

Labour hit by cancer leaflet row

LABOUR has become embroiled in a row about the use of personal data after sending cancer patients alarmist mailshots saying their lives could be at risk under a Conservative government.

Cards addressed to sufferers by name warn that a Labour guarantee to see a cancer specialist within two weeks would be scrapped by the Tories. Labour claims the Conservatives would also do

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Also posted in Big mad database, General Election, Opposition watch | 9 Comments

Digital economy bill must be debated in the Commons

By Alex Foster | Published 16th March 2010 - 12:36 pm

So despite conference taking our peers out for a friendly word in their shell-like, it seems the Digital Economy Bill has successfully cleared the hurdles in the House of Lords.

Some industry experts are relying on the bill passing simply because it runs out of time, the MPs fail to scrutinize it, and it gets through thanks to the wash-up.

So now is the time to write to your MP to insist the bill gets a proper hearing in the Commons. 38 Degrees have information and a campaign to help you do that.

Also posted in Conference, News | Tagged debill, digital economy bill, washup | 8 Comments

DNA profiles removed at rate of only one a day

By The Voice | Published 14th January 2010 - 2:44 pm

So the Independent reports figures unearthed by Paul Holmes MP:

Innocent people’s DNA profiles are being removed from the national database at a rate of barely one a day, figures showed today.

Home Office minister Alan Campbell said just 377 profiles were deleted in 2009 after appeals to police chiefs.

Liberal Democrat policing spokesman Paul Holmes, who uncovered the figures through a written parliamentary question, described the situation as a “disgrace”.

Mr Holmes said chief constables were being discouraged from removing the genetic fingerprint of innocent people until new legislation is passed, which he insisted would not happen before the general election.

The DNA

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Also posted in Big mad database, News | Tagged national dna database, paul holmes | 8 Comments

Postcode campaign gears up to save popular web services

By Mark Pack | Published 7th October 2009 - 7:56 pm

A range of popular websites, providing useful services such as information on local job vacancies and planning applications, have been closed down following the Royal Mail’s decision to crack down on the use they made of its postcode address database.

As Alex blogged previously:

With postcodes so increasingly important to national life, it’s ridiculous that they are not public data that is, as a minimum, free to use for non-profit organisations.

Tagged charles arthur, featured, planningalerts.com, postcodes, richard pope, royal mail | 6 Comments

Damian’s DNA

By Alex Foster | Published 20th August 2009 - 3:46 pm

As the Guardian reports:

Damian Green, the Conservative frontbench immigration spokesman whose arrest during a Home Office leaks inquiry sparked a parliamentary storm, has won a four-month battle to have his DNA, fingerprint and police records destroyed.

The Metropolitan police told Green’s lawyers he is to be treated as “an exceptional case”. His DNA sample and fingerprints, taken when he was arrested, will be deleted within “a number of weeks”.

Meanwhile, for everyone else in Britain, different rules apply, despite a clear ruling from the European Court of Human Rights.

To Green’s credit, he does not want to be a special case: …

Also posted in Big mad database | Tagged Big mad database, damian green, innocent, national dna database | Leave a comment

What does 300 mean to you?

By Alex Foster | Published 16th August 2009 - 2:33 pm

Is it the epic historical film from last year?

Do you see a triangular number and a pair of twin primes (149 and 151)?

Or do you recall how Jo Shaw, the Lib Dem PPC for Holburn and St Pancras revealed in the Telegraph last week that that’s how many children are added to the UK’s DNA database each and every day.

Almost 1.1 million youngsters aged between ten and 17 have had their profiles recorded by the police since 2000, with a large proportion aged under 15, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
And around one in six are likely to

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Also posted in Big mad database, News | 9 Comments

Extraordinary stats about snooping

By Alex Foster | Published 10th August 2009 - 1:59 pm

Kudos to Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary, for garnering excellent coverage for the awful statistics about state sponsored snooping.

The Daily Mail’s ire is justified:

The number of Big Brother snooping missions by police, town halls and other public bodies has soared by 44 per cent in two years.

Last year there were 504,073 new cases – an average of 1,381 a day. It is the equivalent of one adult in 78 coming under state-sanctioned surveillance.

One adult in 78? I wonder who it is on my street. Which member of the Lib Dem Group in the House …

Also posted in Big mad database | 3 Comments

Police told to ignore European Court of Human Rights over DNA database

By Helen Duffett | Published 7th August 2009 - 11:13 pm

Despite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights last December, the Association of Chief Police Officers has written to chief constables in England and Wales advising them to continue adding the DNA profiles of innocent people to the national DNA database. They have been told that new Home Office guidelines will not take effect until 2010.

From the Guardian:

Senior police officers have also been “strongly advised” that it is “vitally important” that they resist individual requests based on the Strasbourg ruling to remove DNA profiles from the national database in cases such as wrongful arrest,

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Also posted in Big mad database, News | Tagged chris huhne, european court of human rights, national dna database, policing | 5 Comments

Lib Dem councillor reveals Lancashire Town hall uses anti-terror laws to snoop on cleaners

By Stephen Tall | Published 18th June 2009 - 7:30 pm

The Mirror reports the news:

Laws designed to fight terrorists and gangsters have been used by a council to spy on its cleaners.

It was revealed yesterday that town hall bosses employed the draconian measures over 500 times, including one occasion to snoop on bus drivers.

Lancashire county council’s tactics were uncovered by Lib Dem Mark Jewell who branded them “an abuse of power.”

Using Freedom of Information, he found out county hall chiefs in Preston ordered surveillance on the cleaners to check if they worked the right hours.

Mr Jewell discovered they frequently used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act between 2001 and

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Also posted in Big mad database, News | Tagged mark jewell, ripa | 4 Comments

Children added to DNA database daily

By Helen Duffett | Published 9th June 2009 - 10:55 am

Figures uncovered by Jo Shaw, Lib Dem PPC for Holborn and St Pancras, show that DNA samples are being taken from children in Camden at the rate of nearly one a day.

From the BBC:

A freedom of information (FOI) request by the Liberal Democrats showed DNA has been taken from an average of 360 young people in Camden every year since 2000.

The samples, from children as young as 10, have been kept regardless of whether charges were ever brought…

Ms Shaw, Lib Dem parliamentary campaigner for Holborn & St Pancras, made the FOI request to the government’s DNA database

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Also posted in Big mad database, News | Tagged freedom of information, jo shaw, national dna database | 1 Comment

Opinion: Lib Dems must lead the way in improving scrutiny of council surveillance

By Chris Ward | Published 3rd May 2009 - 5:25 pm

Media coverage of the abuses by various councils regarding the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) has been very welcome. Conversely, it has unfortunately meant that (at least from my experience) whenever it is brought up at council, those who dare scrutinise the usage of this law are dismissed as bandwagon-jumpers who simply wish to capitalize on the media orgy against council surveillance.

This is why I brought a motion to Liberal Youth Conference in February that was passed unanimously to make restrictions on the legislation party policy; and Liberal Youth subsequently chose for it to go …

Also posted in Big mad database, Local government, Op-eds | Tagged database state, Local government, ripa, surveillance | Leave a comment

“People fix society, if you let them”

By Helen Duffett | Published 3rd May 2009 - 1:57 pm

Please read this. Weep at its simplicity and common sense. Then join me in carrying its writer Becky Hogge aloft down Whitehall.

From the New Statesman:

You cannot fix society with computers. People fix society, if you let them. That means freeing nurses, teachers, social workers – and their clients – from the relentless tyranny of Whitehall’s cravings for ever more information. A benevolent state must have a human face, not an unblinking screen. Technology can help, but only if it is despatched by those at the front line. It is a perverse truth that in an age

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Also posted in Big mad database | Tagged surveillance | 3 Comments

Chris Huhne wins quote of the day

By Stephen Tall | Published 29th April 2009 - 8:35 pm

Ahh, ID cards. Time was the Lib Dems were alone in campaigning for this new invasion of our privacy by the state to be abandoned. Then that nice Mr Cameron’s Tories decided they were, after all, probably not such a good thing. And now it seems that even David Blunkett – perhaps Labour’s most authoritarian home secretary, and against some stiff opposition, too – has decided that, really, they’re maybe unnecessary.

The Lib Dems’ shadow home secretary Chris Huhne’s response is delightfully withering:

When even the father of ID cards spurns them, the idea is truly an abandoned orphan.”

He continues, equally …

Also posted in Big mad database, News | Tagged chris huhne, david blunkett, id cards | 3 Comments

Labour’s ‘Big, Mad Database’ – something practical you can do to stop it

By Stephen Tall | Published 28th April 2009 - 6:42 pm

Over at the Telegraph, Ian Douglas has an important post highlighting quite how sweeping, extensive and intrusive is the Labour Government’s new consultation document, Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment.

(Dontcha just love the title, by the way? Bless that nice smiley Mr Brown for recognising how threatened I feel by recent technological changes, and how grateful I will be when it’s all monitored oh-so-efficiently by his hyper-competent government.)

Ian’s article is a useful synopsis of the key issues (as is Helen Duffett’s article published on LDV earlier today). First, here’s what the Government proposes:

to make all

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Also posted in Big mad database | Tagged ian douglas | 12 Comments

Government afraid of technology offers to protect the public

By Helen Duffett | Published 28th April 2009 - 10:45 am

The Government has launched a consultation on their plans to keep a record of all our “communications data” – that is, the time and recipient of each email, text message or phone call we make, the websites we visit and the place from which we do this.

Although the Government has climbed down from its plans to establish a central database of all communications data, it proposes to make communications service providers hold it instead, for a whole year. Then “public authorities” and “investigators” would be given access to it for their purposes.

The title of the consultation document itself is an irony-free piece of doublethink: “Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment.” In this the author has tried to establish a false common enemy. It implies that it’s us and the Government against Technology, against Change itself. “We’ll protect you,” can then run the argument.

For all the mentions of balance in the document (7 of them, in fact) it’s hard to present a balanced choice once the frame has been set.

No wonder they want to tip the balance: the Government is worried that the pace of technological change is running away from them faster than their salami-slicing tactics of hoarding up every last piece of data about us can keep up. Methods of communication are improving and increasing so mass surveillance is getting cumbersome and expensive.

Note the use of words like “degrade” in the foreword, which make date stamps on our text messages sound like some kind of weapons-grade data plutonium in the war against the bogeyman:

Also posted in Big mad database, News | Tagged jacqui smith | 2 Comments

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