First up: The Office of Public Sector Information has launched a beta test of a new Public Sector Information Unlocking Service:

As the regulator for public sector information re-use, we know that people can encounter difficulty from time to time getting hold of the information they need in the formats they want. … If you are trying to re-use some public sector information, but the data you need is locked-up, this service is for you.

Secondly, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has launched InnovationNation - an attempt to break down the “classic consult/deliver dichotomy”:

We’d love this interactive document to become a place where policymakers, stakeholders and interested citizens come together to help move a policy forward, and we’ll be doing our best to act as a bridge between commenters and the civil servants who are working hard to change things.

Finally, let’s not forget e-petitions (the problems with which are political rather than technological), and the use of micro- and traditional blogging by MPs and political institutions to engage with the public on an increasingly personal level.

It would be churlish of me to belittle these positive achievements by demanding that the moon be delivered on a stick tomorrow, but I can’t help thinking if only there were some way of joining up all these initiatives into a coherent, navigable and accessible framework for public-government interaction. That would be a real breakthrough in Transformational Government!

Politicians and civil servants may not be running rings around the intertubes just yet, but at least they’re finally learning to walk. There’s a faint whiff of optimism coming from .gov.uk at the moment and I think we should inhale while it lasts.

What improvements would you like to see in your technological interactions with Government?

Welcome to mylifemyid - the site where 16-25’s can have their say about identity issues in the UK. A few simple things to remember:

• We want to know what you think, so contribute contribute contribute. Don’t be shy.
• You must first register if you want to add your comments* - it takes only a couple of minutes.

Here’s what I think will happen:

• The ASBO generation will be remain more interested in terrorising Daily Mail readers and posting nekkid pictures of each other on Bebo than in ID cards or Government consultations.

• To “further the debate” the Government-appointed website overlords will stuff the website forum with opinions they’ve gathered by persuading school kids to fill out surveys instead of going to double maths. Quite a lot of these will be positive about ID cards. They will also display factual cluelessness and logical immaturity, thus proving they were written by Yoofs.

• The Anti-ID-cards lobby will bombard the forum with their well-rehearsed arguments against the database state. General anti-government people will also take the opportunity to put the boot in. Godwin’s Law will be invoked by the time the post-count reaches double figures.

• The forum will descend into an unholy flame war, or will be completely overwhelmed by organised ID-card objectors, and will be disappeared in favour of a non-interactive “representative sample of youth opinion”. Both sides will claim this as a moral victory and evidence that they are right: the Government will claim ID cards are the bestist ting evar, innit, and will denounce their detractors for scuppering “genuine consultation efforts”; the Anti-ID lobby will accuse the Government of astroturfing, spin, censorship, cynicism, propaganda and farting in a methane-reduction zone.

• The planet will remain spherical, the Pope will not convert to Hinduism, the film will be shown at eleven.

• The treasury will be a few hundred-thousand quid worse off.

Epic, epic fail.

* [yes, really]

Wouldn’t it be better if social workers, teachers, the police, healthcare professionals and others in public service were empowered to build respectful, constructive relationships with their clients, and to exercise professional judgement to achieve positive outcomes, rather than being under the cosh of an inflexible, kafkaesque bureaucracy that often causes the very tragedies it’s supposed to prevent? Social workers should do social work, not politicians!

I wrote about the wholesale surveillance of children and families back in 2006.

Hat tip: ARCH blog (highly recommended reading, by the way).

I am writing to ask you to vote against the government’s plans to extend from 28 to 42 days the period for which suspects can be interned in the UK.

I am not afraid of terrorism and I don’t want my representatives to be afraid on my behalf. I understand that it is not possible to stop all terrorist acts. I consider the risk to be acceptable because terrorism is incredibly rare: you are more likely to be killed by your own trousers than in an act of random political violence!

Please lobby the government to adopt a security strategy that preserves liberty rather than sacrificing it. Here are two suggestions:

• Invest in the intelligence services. The alleged “liquid bomb” plot was foiled not by imprisoning people without charge or through an Orwellian database system, but by effective, co-ordinated intelligence work over many months. We need more of this. Intelligence works without having to know in advance what the next plot might be and, with proper judicial oversight, it enables us to attack the risk of terrorism in a proportionate way without sacrificing liberty.

• Invest in emergency response. Our emergency services have an excellent track record managing all kinds of incidents, from flooding to suicide bombings. Emergency response is valuable whatever the threat. It is an efficient and effective way to spend money on security that has negligible effect on liberty.

Over the coming days you will be asked by the whips whether the human rights of terrorist suspects are really more important than the stability of the Labour government. You should discard this argument: the success of the government has nothing to do with the matter at hand. Governments come and go, but our fundamental human rights must endure. As a principled and long-serving member of parliament I know you understand this important point.

Please therefore vote against any measures that would extend powers of detention without charge.

Thank you.

If you haven’t yet, there’s still time (go here for information on what to do). Please don’t copy and paste my letter though. It is CC licensed like all the content on this blog, but spamming MPs with multiple copies of the same letter reduces the effectiveness of a campaign. Putting your own thoughts into words doesn’t take long and will make a difference.

In the UK you can already be detained without charge or trial for 28 days if you are accused of terrorism, acts preparatory to terrorism, possessing material for a terrorist purpose, being a member of a terrorist organisation, funding terrorism, attending a terror training camp, inciting terrorism, and more besides. This is one of the longest periods allowed in a democratic country Update: the BBC article gets this all wrong. Here’s a much better analysis from Liberty [pdf]. Hat tip: UK Liberty. If the period expires before you are charged, you must be released from prison but will probably be placed under house arrest instead.

Now the Government wants to extend the pre-charge detention period to six weeks, citing public support and widespread fear about possible future terrorist plots (which they have been actively fomenting):

Today in Britain there are at least 2,000 terrorist suspects, 200 networks or cells and 30 active plots. The aim of terrorists is to kill and maim the maximum number of victims, indiscriminately and without warning, including through suicide attacks.

I am not afraid of terrorism and I don’t want my representatives to be afraid on my behalf. I accept that it is not possible to stop all terrorist acts. The risk is acceptable because terrorism is extremely rare.

So far this century 52 people in the UK have been murdered by criminals using terrorist tactics. Over the same period (extrapolating from figures reported in 2000) more than a million people have died from cancer; heart disease has finished off 880,000 of us; and 28,000 UK citizens were killed on the roads. It is rumoured that you are more likely to be killed by your own trousers than a terrorist bomb!

I have several objections of principal to the six-week internment proposal (and actually they apply to 28 days too):

• The Government hasn’t produced any evidence to show the measures are necessary, preferring instead to quote movie-plot threats about multiple, simultaneous attacks while ignoring the fact that we already have legislation to handle such situations - the Civil Contingencies Act. Sensible alternative suggestions from non-partisan sources have been rejected without satisfactory explanation.

• Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available. The longer the police have to investigate someone, the longer they will take. The existing powers have already been abused in this manner - a researcher at the University of Nottingham was detained without charge for six days over a matter that would surely have been satisfactorily resolved in 48 hours prior to the limit being extended.

• The longer the police investigate someone for, the more likely they are to find something with which to charge them, regardless of whether the investigation itself was legitimate or justified. “Give me six lines written by the most honourable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him” — Cardinal Richelieu.

• Terrorism is fantastically rare, so the vast majority of people interred under these powers will be innocent. Just 3.5% of people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 have been convicted of terrorism.

• The longer someone is imprisoned, the bigger the impact on their lives. This applies even if no charges are brought. Think for a minute whether you’d still have a job, a spouse or a home if you’d spent the last six weeks in prison without ever getting your day in court or the chance to clear your name. There’s no smoke without fire, after all…

• People are playing politics with the issue. If the Government loses a vote in Parliament on the matter it will be widely interpreted as evidence of the Prime Minister’s weakness and incompetence - with knock-on implications for the Labour party’s chances of survival in power. Not an atmosphere that encourages rational debate and principled decision making! The Government has also been trying to horse-trade, offering DUP members of parliament concessions in return for their support. How is it that we’ve arrived at a situation where our fundamental liberties can be horse-traded?

Suspects against whom there is evidence of wrongdoing should be put on trial. Where there is no such evidence they should be released. We should stop dreaming up protection measures against movie plot threats and start investing in intelligence (which works regardless of the threats that might exist) and emergency response (which helps regardless of what type of incident occurs).

If you feel strongly on this issue, and you’re a British citizen, please take a few moments to write to your MP. You can do so online via TheyWorkForYou.com - just put in your postcode and you’ll be taken to a page where you can compose your message. If you need advice on what to say there’s a good guide on how to write an effective letter here.

Tell your MP you’re not afraid of terrorism and ask them to vote on your behalf against the extension of pre-charge detention to 42 days when the counter-terrorism bill comes before the Commons this week.