Protection of Freedoms Bill

[DJKillaQueen]

It looks as though we'll finally see some action on the widespread use of CCTV, use of clamping, and the red tape that make volunteering by decent people complicated.

Article

The Bill

I especially welcome (whilst not the most important aspect of the bill) the move to outlaw clamping on private land. Also the CBRC system needs completely overhualing. I can not cope as it is with the number of applications.

[James Barber]

It's an excellent start by Nick Clegg.

[Loz]

It is an excellent start - I hope it evolves into something even better. On a couple of issues there seems to be a little fudging going on (I'd have taken RIPA away from councils altogether and S44 searches seem to have changed very little).

But there is some really good stuff in there. DNA retention being a real biggie.

[????]

back to some civil liberties......as they've so often thrown it at me before....i hope anyone who voted Labour recently feels proud of supporting a party that had put our civil liberties and accountable parliamentary democracy back so far

[fyvum]

You think that's just down to Labour then do you quids?

[Loz]

The did some pretty serious damage over 13 years. Lots of damage.

As an example, back in 2001 some British plane-spotters were arrested in Greece. The British media were, rightly, appalled and said it was stupid. By 2010, both UK citizens and tourists were being detained in the UK for taking photos of buildings.

Then, of course, there were councils being allowed to snoop on people, innocent people's DNA being retained, the attempt to bring in the ID database, over 20% of the world's CCTV cameras installed in here the UK, the 'rumours and innuendo' database used for vetting staff and volunteers. The list goes on. Hey, they even threw an old man out of their own party conference using prevention of terror laws.

So, it may not ALL be down to Labour, but they sure as hell dumped an awful lot of our freedoms.

[louisiana]

Loz, absolutely.

Under Labour, 'security'-related legislation and regulation just seemed to go through the roof. RIPA being a case in point. But there were hundreds, thousands of other security initiatives..

I finally gave up doing certain kinds of work when a certain government agency (unconnected to defence or security or anything like that, really really mundane) required me to fill out 22 or so pages of forms that included the requirement for me to provide information about my ancestors that I didn't even know myself and would have had to research extensively over weeks/months, internationally, and possibly with dead people; and then required further legal and financial investigations to be conducted by foreign government authorities because I had had the temerity to live abroad during my life; all of which information would take them some six+ months to process (by who knows how many people), they estimated... and all in order to attend their offices in Nottingham and conduct some interviews that they had commissioned, on a single day. The instructions they were acting on emanated from the Cabinet Office, and applied to all government departments, apparently. Though funnily enough, the Cabinet Office itself (on a visit at around the same time, similarly commissioned) proved to be free of such officiousness and wasting of tax-payers' funds. At which point I threw up my hands in incomprehension and despair. When the cost of conducting "security" is greater than the entire cost of a project; and when six-month cushions have to be built in to projects before you can even turn up, for projects that should be completed in less than two weeks, all in order to *rse-cover on "security", the whole system has really gone mad.