Welcome to the Big Brother Watch newsletter.
While the announcements contained in the government's Freedom Bill last week were indeed welcome, there is much left to do, particularly when it comes to reforming the Police's random stop and search powers and removing each and every innocent person from the national DNA database. We include a summary of our work this week below.
As always, please do get in touch if there is any way we can assist you or if you would be interested in contributing a guest post to our widely-read blog.
Freedom Association event with Alex Deane - THIS MONDAY!
On Monday (21st February), former Big Brother Watch Director Alex Deane will address a meeting hosted by our good friends the Freedom Association on the state of civil liberties in Britain.
The event will take place between 6:00 and 7:30pm at the Old Star pub (just across the road from St James's Park tube), 66 Broadway, Westminster, SW1H 1DN.
If you'd like to attend this free event, please click here to register.
Blogs of the Week
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Would you be happy for your valentine to read the contents of your email account? He might well have already done so and, if your valentine is a lady – if that is the right word, it’s even more likely!
While some of us instruct our better halves that if they’re creepin’ keep it on the low, 34 per cent of women (versus 14 per cent of men) questioned in an anonymous survey admitted to having broken into their partner’s email at least once. Meanwhile, the men surveyed were keener on more direct surveillance: 3 per cent admitted hiding a camera and 5 per cent ‘regularly’ used online mobile phone trackers to monitor their lover’s location.
epiphany on civil liberties has taken place but because they don't actually work!
MPs call for EVERYONE to be added to the national DNA database
Last Friday, the government published its new Freedom Bill. Included in the document was a commitment from the government to delete the majority of the data belonging to innocent people from the national DNA database.
Sadly, Conservative MP Laurence Robertson does not agree with his party's own position on this issue. Indeed, in comments to his local paper in Gloucestershire, he has gone one step further and called for everyone to have their details stored on a central database.
Manchester Airport switches off face recognition scanners
News has reached the Big Brother Watch team of a positive development at Manchester Airport - the switching off of their facial recognition scanners.
Now, before you get too excited, they haven't been switched off because of some kind of epiphany on civil liberties has taken place but because they don't actually work!
Common sense prevails in Bath
Last week, Big Brother Watch reported on an online poll being carried out by the Bath Chronicle into whether or not the spa town's residents would like to see the council impose a New York-style smoking ban in all parks and outdoor public places.
Well, the votes have been cast, the results have been tallied and the residents of Bath have rejected this naked step towards nanny-statism by a whopping 63% to 37% margin.
The debate is heating up in the US over the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset legislation that was introduced last year to Congress. According to USA Today, the bill has been a much discussed topic at the RSA Internet security conference taking place in San Francisco this week. The legislation creates addition cyber security measures and adds emergency powers that can be enacted by the President. The bill allows for the President to shut down Internet access in the event of an emergency for up to 120 days. And this is the part that is causing the most controversy
Media Coverage
Daniel Hamilton on LBC Radio discussing CCTV coverage in schools.
Daniel Hamilton on BBC Radio London discussing the launch of the census.
Daniel Hamilton on BBC Radio Somerset discussing the use of volunteers to monitor council-owned CCTV cameras.
Daniel Hamilton on Radio Leith and the Adrian Goldberg Show on BBC Radio West Midlands discussing the government's new Freedom Bill.
Express - At last, victory over Labour's army of snoopers
Anti-surveillance campaign group Big Brother Watch said in a statement: “It’s scandalous that so many members of the public have been forced to undergo these intrusive and humiliating vetting procedures and the coalition is to be applauded"
European Journal - The Commission’s INDECT project: The dawn of EU-sponsored snooping (article by Daniel Hamilton)
In 2007 – over two years before the Lisbon Treaty entered into effect – the European Council adopted to so-called Prum Convention as means by which to reinforce cooperation between Member States on issues such as combating illegal immigration, crime border crime-fighting and preventing terrorist attacks on EU Member States.
While a number of European Union Member States (the United Kingdom included), had initially opted to remain outside its operating structures which demand that signatories share centrally-held information on DNA, fingerprints and motor vehicle registration freely when undertaking investigations into suspected terrorist activity, this data is now shared freely across the EU’s 27 Member States.
Tribune - Review of the Big Brother Watch book
"Big Brother Watch is a campaign, launched by the founders of the right-wing pressure group the Taxpayers' Alliance, to protect our freedoms and fight intrusions on privacy. As Tony Benn, an unlikely fellow traveller for the Taxpayers' Alliance, says in the foreword: "Civil liberties are the foundation of freedom and democracy depends upon our defending them vigorously.
In an increasingly dangerous and volatile world, the state seems to take a closer and closer interest in the lives of its citizens. As powers to observe our habits and film our movements - in other words, to snoop and spy - increase, our freedoms diminish. It is a frightening way to run a democracy.
In 27 powerful essays, a cross-section of commentators dissects the UK's surveillance culture, the nanny state giving way to the bully state, as national authorities view citizens as fodder for databases with personal details, DNA and anything else they can use to control us. The glib phrase "free country" is no longer true, if it ever was in the fist place
Lancashire Evening Post - Bus station CCTV ‘fails’ in crime hunt
Daniel Hamilton, campaign director at pressure group Big Brother Watch, claims the £165,000-a-year it costs to man the equipment could pay the annual salaries of seven new police officers.
He said: “This report comes as absolutely no surprise. We have long argued that CCTV makes no impact on cutting crime and anti-social behaviour.
“Over the last three years, Preston Council has spent more than £572,000 on CCTV, enough to put 26 more bobbies on the beat. “
With public spending cuts starting to bite, people would prefer to see more police on the streets rather than expensive and ineffective CCTV cameras.”
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