Rory Bremner: Our liberty is on the line. It's time to act
It is not just laptops and memory sticks that are being lost: it is freedom
Back in the far-off days when banks held dinners or award ceremonies (I'm thinking around last spring), I used to begin my presenter's speech by explaining the absence of anyone from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC). This, I said, was because they had lost the invitation. In response to a question about whether they got the follow-up email, they replied that they hadn't, because they were still trying to find the computer. Ha, ha.
But as with so many areas of government, the parody pales against the reality. Between August 2007 and 2008, 41 laptops were stolen from HMRC. Over at the Ministry of Defence, it was worse: 120 laptops and 74 hard drives went Awol last year alone. I suppose we can claim to be better than the Pentagon, whose inspectorate reported in 2003 that 56 aircraft, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile command launch units had gone missing.
But the point is made. The Government and its agencies, who are seeking unprecedented access to our personal details, are themselves serially incapable of safeguarding that information. It is as if, instead of shredding our confidential records, we emptied them into one of those skip lorries that bowls down the motorway strewing paper from under a poorly fastened tarpaulin. The inability of government departments to protect confidential data is but one of the subjects that will doubtless be discussed at today's Convention on Modern Liberty, a timely and vital audit of the alarming erosion of our freedoms in recent years.
It comes to something when the former head of MI5, the former director of public prosecutions and the US President are all calling for a reassessment of how far the balance has tilted away from individual freedom and towards what Ken Macdonald memorably described as "the paraphernalia of paranoia". In a damning indictment of his predecessor, Barack Obama declared at his inauguration that "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals". The phrase goes to the heart of what Dame Stella Rimington was talking about last week, when she warned the Government against "frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, which is precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state".
The phrase "police state" is an emotive one, but when the former HMRC chairman Sir David Varney, the head of the Orwellian-sounding "transformational government" strategy – the project to share information across all databases – says the state will possess "a deep truth about the citizen based on their behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs or desires", and former Whitehall security co-ordinator Sir David Omand admits that "finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules", it is time to start the alarm bells ringing.
Already we have seen dozens of examples of where the plethora of recent legislation – some 25 Acts of Parliament and 50 individual measures – has led to cases of injustice ranging from the comical to the downright scandalous. We remember Walter Wolfgang, threatened under terror laws for heckling Jack Straw; Steve Jago, arrested for holding a placard bearing Orwell's words "in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" and possessing "politically motivated material" (a Henry Porter article on freedom under Blair); the woman prosecuted for causing "alarm, harassment and distress" to US servicemen at Menwith Hill by displaying a sign saying "George W Bush? Oh dear". More recently Dave Vaughan, aka "PC Konk the Clown", was deemed a security risk and forced to strip from his costume to his underwear at Birmingham airport while appearing at a Variety Club party, and schoolboy Fabian Sabbara, 15, was held as a terror suspect after photographing his local railway station for a GCSE project.
It is not just laptops and memory sticks that are being lost: in several cases it is fundamental freedoms. A new report by UCL's Student Human Rights Programme catalogues those rights under threat from recent legislation, ranging from the Kafka-esque use of Asbos (these orders themselves may be applied merely on the balance of probabilities, but breaching one becomes a criminal offence), or the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), which allows any senior government minister (including the Chief Whip) to invoke widespread emergency powers with no further justification than their own assessment of the situation. Then there's the grim RIPA – the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Did you know that postal services may be forced to open, copy and reseal any postal item, with specific obligations to intercept with as little impact as possible, to ensure individuals remains unaware of the intrusion?
Another insidious little measure is the Coroners and Justice Bill (2009) currently in preparation, which would allow the Government to suspend controversial inquests, hold them without a jury and, where desired, amend the Data Protection Act. This measure is being put through by Jack Straw – the same Jack Straw who this week denied access to cabinet minutes on the decision to go to war, and, amusingly, the same Jack Straw who was the object of a Nigerian email scam requesting money to enable his swift return from that country. (It might have worked better if they'd threatened to return him if the money was not paid.) His refusal to allow scrutiny of cabinet records (and the Tories' supine support) obligingly drove a coach and horses through the hackneyed official argument that "if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide".
Douglas Hurd once said that prison is the most expensive way of making bad people worse. In a similar way, being made Home Secretary (or indeed Justice Secretary) seems to make politicians more authoritarian. If this is the thin end of the wedge, the Government seems in an undue hurry to move on to the thick end. I am aware of the ongoing terrorist threat. But so are Dame Stella, Ken Macdonald and Barack Obama. I'm also aware of that über-neocon, Hermann Goering, who told his trial at Nuremberg that "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger; it works the same in any country."
We already have wide-ranging terror laws. The purpose of today's conference is to draw attention to the scale of the concomitant erosion of our privacy and our freedoms. This Government appears to believe that Jefferson's phrase "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance" means that we need to be kept under constant surveillance. This misinterpretation needs challenging. As Ed Murrow put it half a century ago, you cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The Convention on Modern Liberty is being held at the Institute of Education in Bloomsbury, London, and across the country today: modernliberty.net
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Comments
She admitted , in fact stuck the chest out and claimed, responsibility for the mickey mouse 'Human Rights Act' : y'know, the one that awards 'human rights' to violent criminals and illegal immigrants but not to children among other deserving population sectors, because she cut out Article 13 and refused to ratify Protocol 12 ('cause we are ruled and judged by jolly good chaps and therefore don't need those two safeguards, despite the fact that said sociopathic jolly good chaps front for and protect the interests of organised economic crime syndicates et al) and/or implement fraudulently ratified UNCRC.
We're all doing it and they can't throw all of us in jail, can they?
It's never too late to defend our freedom and we'll all regret it if we don't act now.
For a start, go to http://freedom.libdems.org.uk/ and sign the Freedom Bill Petition.
1. The readers of the Independent, being of the political left, are actually showing the true position of the 'left' i.e. moral bankruptcy.
2. The gradual removal of our freedoms by the current Labour Govt. (and which would be rather accelerated by the fascists of the BNP,) is something Mr Bremner is about to discover, will also be welcomed by the good readers.
Sorry for this 'skewed' way of thinking but as I'm still recovering from the shock of discovering that Independent readers appear to be sympathetic to a bunch of Nazis, what does anyone expect?
It's a lie - there aren't.
You'll find them pushing their agenda all over the internet - for example, on BBC message-boards.
I wonder why then there are so few 'Indie' minded readers prepared to comment here on their abhorrence of the BNP?
A while ago there was an Indie article about an extreme right wing Russian/Israeli politician and there were hundreds of posts within hours, invariably all of them condemning him, and some with some very unpleasant, anti-semitic language. Yet when we are confronted with similar evil on our own doorstep, Indie readers, according to you, aren't motivated to comment.
I'm sorry but I just don't buy it.
Nazi thuggery and threats.
I've already had one nutter who has promised to track me down and "slap me around".
But most of the BNP rent-a-gob posters have been warned by their minders not to make overt threats - they have to give at least the illusion of being cheerful and law-abiding Nazis, you see.
It is.
Once that Rubicon has been crossed - and it may well be before the next election - then we will face a constitutional crisis, since the government, presumably backed by the Metropolitan Police, will no longer be constrained by law.
It's going to be an interesting year ...
The UK can be classed as a police state because quasi-judicial sanctions are imposed on people without trial or due process of law. In this way entirely innocent people are criminalised because there is no case for the defence. In this respect, New Labour have turned the civic clock back centuries.
Whatever New Labour are striving to achieve, it is not the wishes of the people, but the completion of a perverse experiment in social monitoring and control which, fifteen years ago, would have been regarded as sci fi.
Such a Government would need a global currency, are current events moving us towards that goal?
Give it some thought - this Global depression was assured in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve. A conspiracy? Who would have thought it?
It was a power grab, pure and simple, a very nasty one, if enabled, this act would have given the Prime Minster the ability to rule by decree, indeed he could in fact decree that there never be another Prime Minister if he so chose, it lets you understand a little just what New Labour is all about.
Was this a well meaning but incompetent piece of legislation or was it an attempt at a velvet coup? I think the LLRB was sold on the merits of its time saving, red tape saving abilities, many people were in favour of it not reading the small print but the large print saying "your job will become easier".
But look at its sinister undertones, the ability to bypass Parliament to force through unwelcome laws, the ability to create new laws without parliament approval or interaction, power would devolve from the houses into the PM and 11 cabinet ministers...
Bush across the water brought in similar legislation around the same time through one of his signing statements, his was our CCA and LLRB in one, Bush could declare an emergency by himself without giving reason, could dismiss both houses for six months, would have sole signing power on ANY law, legislation or act in the US, in such a case it was envisaged that he could strike down with a signed statement the constitution, he had six months free rein before he had to reinstate the houses BUT what if he signed a statement doing away with the houses...?
We have to be on our guard now because once bitten, twice shy, the CCA went through virtually unopposed, luckily there is a very short time constraint on that one from its original inception of up to six months suspension of Parliament, this government is desperate to force through ID cards, NIR and gaining huge power over the citizen, sooner or later New Labour will try again and if they fail, will create a situation that will see us begging for these things... its called false flag.
"Did you know that postal services may be forced to open, copy and reseal any postal item, with specific obligations to intercept with as little impact as possible, to ensure individuals remains unaware of the intrusion?"
Actually, as anyone who has worked in the Post Office can not tell you because of the Official Secrets Act, they have been doing that for simply ages. Why do you think it was cheaper to send a postcard?
THAT IS BECAUSE
AS SOON AS MEN GET THEIR FREEDOM,
THEY START TAKING LIBERTIES
INIT
ABRAHAM IS REPUTED TO HAVE BEEN BORN IN UR IN MESOPATAMIA IN WOT IS PRESENTLY CALLED THE DEAD REPUBLIC OF IRAQ
THAT EXPLAINS THE WOT AND THE WHY REGARDING THE UNKL SAM INVASION OF THAT PLACE
IT IS A POXY PROXY JEWISH WAR FOR POSESSION
JEWS
CHRISTIANS
AND
MUSLIMS
BETWEEN THEM THEY ARE DESTROYING THE WURLD
AND THE HAND THAT DIRECTS THE COURSE OF EVENTS IS THE HAND OF THE JEW
AND THE JEWISH BANKERS IN EUROPE AND IN AMERRYKHA
ED
Watch the Obama Deception
Have a look at some of the videos here:
www.youtube.com/globalbankfraud