Yesternight I went looking for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) apps.
For the jargon wary and the jargon weary, OCR is the process by which a computer converts a scanned image of some text to actual editable, malleable computer text. It’s a useful tool to have on hand, especially if your work (or play) deals with anything literary or historical. Like speech recognition software, its also a bit magical.
I wanted to transcribe a few noteworthy pages of a novel, to paste into my Commonplace Book. Rather that wait a few hours until I could use my office facilities to scan and convert the text, I sought recommendations online and did a search of Apple’s App Store.
Category: Diary (Page 83 of 301)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
It’s been slow on this blog recently. Nothing posted in just over a week.
That’s because I’ve had a busy week at work. English PEN have joined the Open Rights Group, Big Brother Watch and Constanze Kurz to sue the British Government at the European Court of Human Rights, over its use of mass surveillance programmes such as Prism and Tempora. The application argues that these programmes are too wide in scope, go beyond anything provided by law, and have ineffective oversight.
Prism, you will recall, is the US spy project that secured access to the data stored by American telephone and internet companies – including tech giants Google and Apple. Tempora, meanwhile, is the British project to physically plug-in to the undersea fibre-optic cables in order to intercept billions of communications (since this involves actual bending of light, I would say that it is this programme that should actually be called Prism, but there we go).
Privacy is a human right guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention (ECHR). Free speech is also a human right, Article 10. As I wrote in an English PEN bulletin on Friday, Privacy is a crucial guarantor of free speech.
Activists cannot comfortably share information nor discuss advocacy if they believe the authorities are looking over their shoulder. How can you read and write freely if you suspect that someone, somewhere, is keeping a record of your thoughts?
A central allegation made by whistle-blowers is that the NSA and GCHQ have been sharing data gleaned from these programmes. Since the spies are given much more leeway to snoop on foreigners, the two agencies can avoid warrants and oversight by simply spying on each others citizens, and sharing the result! If this is happening then it is very wrong and shows that the legislation and oversight in this area is not up to scratch.
Our group has chosen to take go straight to Strasbourg because there is no effective remedy in the UK. Other civil liberties groups that tried to challenge the Government over its use of the Prism and Tempora programmes have been sent to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. But that’s a body which investigates complaints in secret, so its no good as a forum for redress, or for calling the Government to account.
A dedicated website has been set up for the campaign. It puts the case in context, and gives an overview of the arguments. We have also posted the actual legal applications. We asked anyone who is incensed by our Government’s complicity in mass surveillance to donate to the legal fund. The campaign raised the £20,000 target in less than 48 hours – this is clearly an issue that the public feels strongly about.
I am very pleased with this image I took, of St George the Martyr’s church, juxtaposed with The Shard at London Bridge.
That is all. Carry on with whatever it was you were doing.
In the past couple of months I have been making notes on the Labour Party’s approach to human rights. Here’s a quote from the conference speech given by my MP, the Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan:
What happens when you cut back judicial review? You betray bereaved families, like the Hillsborough campaigners, who can’t challenge terrible decisions.
What’s the outcome of cutting legal aid? The family of Jean Charles De Menezes, the innocent Brazilian man shot at Stockwell tube station would no longer have access to expert lawyers in the future. Nor indeed the Gurkhas or the Lawrence family. It’ll be harder for victims of domestic violence to break away from abusive partners.
Continue reading
Writing in the New Statesman, Labour Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan brazenly declares that the Liberal Democrat’s record in Government has left Labour as the party of civil liberties. This has kicked off predictable outrage from Lib Dem activists and in the comments, with most people citing the poor record of the last Labour government.
Despite the Blair Government’s terrible approach to civil liberties and counter-terrorism, its wrong to call Khan a hypocrite. For starters, he was one of the Labour rebels who voted against Tony Blair’s 90-day detention policy, back in 2005. More recently, he has admitted the party’s mistakes on human rights and civil liberties. Part of his Charter 88 anniversary lecture was a scathing critique of the last Labour Government’s approach:
And I hold up my hands and admit that we did, on occasions, get the balance wrong. On 42 and 90 days, and on ID cards, where the balance was too far away from the rights of citizens… On top of this, we grew less and less comfortable with the constitutional reforms we ourselves had legislated for. On occasions checked by the very constitutional reforms we had brought in to protect people’s rights from being trampled on. But we saw the reforms as an inconvenience, forgetting that their very awkwardness is by design. A check and balance when our policies were deemed to infringe on citizens’ rights.
If an opposition spokesperson says this, I think they ward off the charge of hypocrisy when they subsequently criticise the civil liberties failings of the Governing coalition. We want political parties to admit their mistakes and reverse their policies, don’t we? Whether the voters believe Labour or not is another matter, but I think the fact that the spokesman is someone who was a Government rebel on 90 days, and who has been a target of surveillance himself, make Labour’s position that little bit more credible. Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, included similar nostra culpas in her Demos speech on security and surveillance.
Continue reading