Tag archive for ‘digitalrights’
Europe mulls search-term surveillance
Europe wants to monitor what you search for on the Internet. Under the misleading guise of protecting children against sexual abuse (sigh) Written Declaration 29 calls for the Data Retention Directive to be extended to cover search engines. This would force national Governments to record everything you type into Google, Bing, Yahoo! et al and [...]
Quantifying compromise
Yesterday the Government announced a “Freedom or Great Repeal Bill” to undo the worst excesses of Labour authoritarianism. If many of the policies therein seem familiar it’s because they seem to have been cherry-picked from the Freedom Bill that the Liberal Democrats put together for the Convention on Modern Liberty last year. After the publication [...]
That light at the end of the tunnel? It’s liberty.
The new Conservative-Liberal coalition Government today announced it intends to pass a “Freedom” or “Great Repeal” Act. This will:
Scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the ContactPoint Database.
Outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
Extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to [...]
DEACTivating Labour in Sheffield
The Digital Economy Act 2010 is now law. Last week thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, watched the tragedy unfold on Twitter and via the live stream from Parliament (starts at 20:51:25). Many of those people were seeing the internal mechanisms of the British political system for the first time. Their reaction was almost universally one [...]
Sheffield MPs should be ashamed
Despite massive public opposition the Digital Economy Bill was voted into law last night. Here’s how Sheffield MPs behaved:
Constituency
MP
Party
At 2nd reading?
At 3rd reading?
How they voted
Attercliffe
Clive Betts
Labour
No
No
FOR the Bill
Brightside
David Blunkett
Labour
No
No
ABSENT
Central
Richard Caborn
Labour
No
No
FOR the Bill
Hallam
Nick Clegg
Lib Dem
No
No
ABSENT
Heeley
Meg Munn
Labour
No
No
FOR the Bill
Hillsborough
Angela Smith
Labour
No
No
FOR the Bill
Frankly, I’m appalled. Any illusions I had about Britain being a representative democracy have been shattered. [...]