Tag Archives: surveillance

The Independent View: How do we stop the growth of the surveillance state?

By Simon Davies | Published 20th January 2010 - 12:50 pm

From any dispassionate view, it’s clear that the Liberal Democrats have consistently believed that the protection of our right to privacy is vital for a free and open society.

However, protecting that fragile right is a complex process that requires genuine and tangible policy objectives that will make a real difference. To reverse the rise of surveillance is a task that goes to the heart of how we are governed. Making a real difference will require a courageous agenda of change that reaches deep into the powerful institutions of parliament and government.

There is no doubt in the …

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Posted in Op-eds, The Independent View | Also tagged , | 6 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 13 September 2009

By Stephen Tall | Published 13th September 2009 - 10:05 am

Welcome to the Sunday edition of LDV’s Daily View. And as Mark Pack of this e-parish is (apparently) forraging for chocolate in Bristol, it falls to me to bring you today’s supplement with extra multimedia entertainment.

2 Big Stories

NSPCC and Nick criticise new Government regulations for parent helpers

Today’s Telegraph reports:

Ministers are under intense pressure to scale back plans for a “big brother” child protection database which will force millions of parents to undergo paedophile and criminal checks. In a major blow for the Government, Britain’s largest children’s charity, the NSPCC, criticised the regulations for parent helpers which it said

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Posted in Daily View | Also tagged , , , , , , , | 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 …

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“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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Posted in Big mad database | 3 Comments

Not carrying mobile phone = suspicious activity

By Helen Duffett | Published 24th April 2009 - 2:39 pm

When did you last leave home without your mobile phone?

The Register describes cases in Germany and France where people were accused of being terrorists because they didn’t use mobile phones:

By design, phones pass their location on to local base stations. You can gauge how effectively the networks can track you by requesting your personal information from your network provider using a data subject access under the Data Protection Act, or by just running Google Mobile Maps on your phone. The smaller 3G cells in central London give an even better location than on GSM.

Mobile phone penetration in Europe

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Posted in Big mad database | 11 Comments

“Tourist” sounds a bit like “terrorist”: be very afraid!

By Helen Duffett | Published 16th April 2009 - 9:30 pm

A father and son on holiday in London were stopped by police and made to delete photos from their cameras, of a bus station and some double decker buses.

From the Guardian:

Like most visitors to London, Klaus Matzka and his teenage son Loris took several photographs of some of the city’s sights, including the famous red double-decker buses. More unusually perhaps, they also took pictures of the Vauxhall bus station, which Matzka regards as “modern sculpture”.
But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the

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Posted in News | Also tagged , | 10 Comments