To Save You We Have to Subjugate You
Professor Ian Walden suggests reasons why the government has succeeded in growing its surveillance society:
“Once happy to leave cyberspace ‘unregulated’, Governments, including that of the UK, seem increasingly willing to encroach on what we do, say and see over the Internet,” said Professor Walden, head of the Institute of Computer and Communications Law at Queen Mary, University of London.
He warned that increasing use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter will give the authorities access to information about individuals’ private lives.
”As we spend more of our lives online, concerns about the impact of surveillance on rights of expression and privacy are likely to increase,” he said.
Professor Walden, a former trustee on the Internet Watch Foundation, the industry self regulatory body, said that problems such as child pornography, illegal file sharing and terrorism are used to justify ‘Big Brother-like’ scrutiny of all internet activity, even though the vast majority of web users are law abiding.
“The police clearly took advantage of the terrorist bombing in London to get an agenda, which has been around for years, pushed to the forefront” he said.
“They would never have got Government support for data retention, which became a European issue, without the Madrid and London bombings.” The 2004 Madrid bombers used one shared web based email account to make plans, rather than exchanging messages that could be intercepted. Their actions killed 191 people and wounded over 1,000.
I think it’s a pretty accurate analysis of what’s going on right now, without necessarily explaining why. It’s clear paedophilia is ‘in vogue’ with the government – why else persist with the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) when there is demonstrably no need for it? Ian Huntley killed Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, but it wasn’t because of an absence of government regulation of people working in the public sector or with children. Notice too how propaganda against digital piracy is being posed as an economic and creative threat to us all, when each has plenty of evidence not to be the case. And just look at how photographers are being harassed, under the ridiculous pretext of having to clamp down on terrorist reconnaissance.
But I don’t think any of them will remain successful factors which push indefinitely towards ever greater surveillance. The resistance against the ISA is considerable, from teachers to writers and parents. The resistance against the presumption that all photographers are terrorists led to an unbelievable turnout at the Mass Gathering in Trafalgar Square last Saturday, and there are complicated groupings beginning to ally against Peter Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill. There’s a tipping point in this process, and I think we’re fast approaching it. I’ll be interested to see what else Prof Walden has to say at his lecture at Queen Mary, University of London next week.
ISP Chief Executives Attack Mandelson’s Filesharing Plans
Peter Mandelson’s sudden conversion to disconnecting filesharers from the internet to get the ‘problem’ of p2p under control has been attacked by chief executives of Britain’s internet service providers (ISP):
In a letter to The Times, Charles Dunstone of TalkTalk, Ian Livingston of BT and Tom Alexander of Orange UK criticised the proposals on how to reduce illegal filesharing announced last month, which include the possibility of disconnecting accounts.
The letter, also signed by Deborah Prince of Which?, Ed Mayo of Consumer Focus and Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, said innocent consumers would suffer.
The letter itself reads as follows:
Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty. We must avoid an extrajudicial “kangaroo court” process where evidence is not tested properly and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations. Without these protections innocent customers will suffer. Any penalty must be proportionate. Disconnecting users from the internet would place serious limits on their freedom of expression. Usually, constraints to freedom of expression are imposed only as the result of custodial sentences, or incitement to racial hatred, or libel.
A point very nicely put. Mandelson’s plans represent the same problem posed by the Independent Safeguarding Authority – they are the equivalent of a sledgehammer to crack a nut, benefit entirely the wrong people, and would have side effects – most notably (in both cases) of undermining the rule of law. It’s heartening to see these people bringing the issue back to that, because ahead of any other transgression, it’s the undermining of the rule of law which remains this government’s most appalling achievement. Join us in fighting to stop it, and join me at the Pirate Party UK’s first public meeting this Saturday at 5.30pm in London.
The Government Plans to Cut Your Internet Off
The battle lines are being drawn. In June the government’s ‘Digital Britain’ report ruled out cutting people off from the internet for filesharing, but Peter Mandelson has decided to overrule its findings:
Under the tougher proposals, internet service providers would be obliged to block access to download sites, throttle broadband connections or even temporarily cut off access for repeat offenders.
Communications regulator Ofcom would report regularly to the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, providing evidence of whether such action is required against illegal filesharers.
The consultation document from Mandelson’s Department for Business Innovation and Skills proposes that the secretary of state could then direct Ofcom to implement a raft of new technical measures.
The Pirate Party UK’s responded by saying:
This is a massive announcement that threatens far more people than before, yet it has been hidden away in an update to a consultation document. We are only to be given 5 weeks to respond to this major announcement and defend our right to justice, a fair trial, and to defend the principle that collective punishments are wrong, despite the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills having a commitment to 12 week minimum consultation periods.
The other new announcement is that ISPs will be expected to share the cost of enforcement 50:50 with ‘rights holders’, a move which may well price independent artists and film-makers out of the process, and places an unjustifiable burden on ISPs who are a third party in disputes between file sharers and rights holders.
Yet again the Government have done exactly what the big media cartel have told them.
It does seem awfully convenient that the government is more interested in listening to David Geffen than coming up with a workable solution to the problem of filesharing. The government should be forced to answer the question of whose rights they’re most interested in protecting: the rights of powerful rights holders? The rights of the artists themselves? The rights of users? Again however we are in the situation where the government has bought into an international, corporate agenda at the expense of those whose interests it’s really supposed to be protecting.
Former minister Tom Watson offers a thoughtful response to the controversy:
A much more fruitful path – economically, politically and socially – would be to ask why current economic and regulatory conditions are not bringing about enough legal alternatives to draw UK consumers away from illicit p2p. Working on the fairly safe assumptions that (a) people like downloading music from the internet, and (b) most people, given a choice, would prefer not to break the law, we should aim to map a way forward for businesses old and new to take advantage of the digital market in a way that allows them sufficient profits to invest in the creative talent of the future.
I couldn’t agree more – it seems like such common sense. Why criminalise 6-7 million people when they’re responding to technological change, and to a widely-shared perception that the artists whose product is being shared aren’t losing out through filesharing? If the potential losers in the p2p future are corporate, what’s government doing siding arbitrarily (and disproportionately) with them, and entirely against users (which is quite possibly illegal)?
If you’re against Mandelson’s kowtowing to Big Media join the Pirate Party UK here. You’ve seen how successful they were in Sweden. Join them here and send a message to New Labour.
