Liberty Events

[Marmora Man]

This event Liberty Event passed under my radar, otherwise I would be there protesting at Government plans to extend further the surveillance society.

The current Communications Data Bill, being promoted by Jaqui Smith, could create a database of e-mails and telephone messages between us all. Jaqui Smith has said that a more efficient means of storing data such as the timing and location of phone calls made by terror suspects would avoid more wide-scale surveillance of the public. She argues it will help prevent terrorism and murders such as Soham and that intecepting 'chatter between potential terrorists' - in other words you and me - is 'vital for national security.'

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, says: 'The thing we have to worry about is what happens next, because the government is already mooting plans to create a central government database where they hold all the information.'

We must oppose this bill - I would recommend lobbying our MPs - but Tessa J and Harriet Harperson are unlikely to oppose the government line.

[Huguenot]

The only thing I can't rationalise is that the public seems quite happy to hand over all of it's data to non-democratic commercial organisations without batting an eyelid.

The big search engines and email companies routinely examine and share data such as search habits and email content for advertising purposes, and to influence your behaviour online. I don't see anyone dropping Google, Yahoo! or Facebook to protest this?

Major stores routinely match our shopping habits with our personal profiles and credit ratings to send us direct mail promoting various goods and services, but I don't see anyone boycotting Tesco or their Clubcard in protest.

The Oystercard even records our journeys and our destinations with our age and gender.

If people were as worried about fascist dictatorships as all that, then why don't they see these non-demoncratic organisations as a greater threat?

Incidentally, Ben Goldacre does a great job here about demonstrating why mass email content modelling is a mathematically pointless exercise.

[beef]

After I've bigged up Ben Goldacre's book 'Bad Science' can I say that while on the face of it this may seem to be our governments over zealous attempt to '1984' our asses it is, as Huguenot says, something commercial organizations do routinely. Any information gathered is bound to be lost or accidently wiped, and anything pertaining to terrorism will pass under their noses or over their heads. What needs to be held to account is the continuing incompetence of our civil service and in recent years the calibre of our civil servants.

[Marmora Man]

Ben Goldacre's illustration is good and demonstrates the Government's illogicality. On the subject of commercial organisations holding our data - two points:

1. We voluntarily give them access - it is a choice and we can, if we wish, choose to avoid.

2. They are, in general, looking at mass, rather than individual, data - how many SE22 residents shop in Sainsbury's and buy Macleans toothpaste every month. They are not linking it to my flight from Damascus, my flickr photos from Istanbul and my telephone conversations with business colleagues in Kuwait to make connections that aren't there.

It should not be necessary to intrude on law abiding individuals. I like the idea that, if I choose, I could pay cash for everything, rent a property under an assumed name, use internet cafes, have no car or driving licence, no TV or TV licence and no passport - and thus live a life unfettered by Government intrusion. As every day passes we are more likely to have to prove our existence and identification to Government just to live our lives. I think this is fundamentally wrong.

[Brendan]

Another point is that one of the reasons we employ a government is to regulate the behaviour of large corporations to make sure they don?t do things like use our data to exploit us. It is not for the government to regulate individuals.

[Huguenot]

Not sure what you mean by regulate Brendan - that's exactly what a law and order system does: regulate between social, antisocial, and morally inappropriate behaviour

Privacy issues are about how far they can go to do this and what the cost/benefit curve looks like (cost can be calculated in moral as well as financial currencies).

MM, I can see what you mean by voluntary disclosure - it means that people who do sign up consider they get more in reward for signing up to these services than they feel they pay in disclosure.

I wouldn't get too comfortable about how discrete your internet usage behaviour is when you're online: the 'disclosure' element is poorly understood.

For example Yahoo! actually own Flickr, and the data from this is pooled. Yahoo! also own a company called Right Media, which supports advertising across 2,000 or more individual websites, and the data on these is also pooled.

Google own Blogger (the world's largest blog site), Youtube, GMail and Picasa photo site. That's around 20% of online activity. They also own Doubleclick, which provides data collection across a million plus websites every month. The data from that is also pooled.

With things like Streetview, Google are also taking photos of your house and putting them online along with the address. Here you don't even have an opt-in. They're just doing it.

That's commercial organisations for you.

Perhaps the ID card for example should be sold as a solution for the 800 million quid stolen from our tax fund every year by benefit fraud. That seems more appealing than 20 clubcard points.

[Marmora Man]

Hugenot - don't start me on ID cards. A financial and database disaster waiting to happen. It would be the lynchpin that ties all the other government databases together to one unique identified.

Fortunately it's probably a cost too far given how much money this government has committed tax payers too already.

[pk]

i tend to agree with the information commissioner on most of these issues. it's shame that he won't be in the role for too much longer

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5812076.ece