Here’s an interesting and important piece of news that you will not have heard about. Campaigning NGO Privacy International have secured a court decision in their favour against HM Revenue & Customs over the issue of illegal exports on surveillance software to oppressive regimes.
Here’s the issue in a nutshell. British firms create deeply unpleasant surveillance software—spyware—and sell it to brutal dictatorships. Often this is in violation of trade sanctions against the country in question. HMRC are supposed to investigate and fine those businesses who violate trade restrictions. But when Privacy International requested information from HMRC about these investigations, the agency was unco-operative. The Administrative Court has condemned this behaviour. Continue reading
Tag: Human Rights (Page 15 of 40)
Today I was interviewed by Pete Woods for Good Cause TV. We discussed English PEN’s campaign to reverse the Ministry of Justice’s ridiculous restrictions on sending books into prisons. We discussed the ‘Catch-22’ aspects to the policy, and the idea that literature should be a human right.
You can watch the video below, or on Spreecast. Continue reading
It seems to be a cast iron rule of politics that our leaders will become more authoritarian when they take office. The standard explanation for this is that they simply become drunk on power. But at the Time for A Digital Bill of Rights? parliamentary meeting yesterday, Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron gave a more nuanced explanation:
No-one will assent to rules that imply that they may abuse their power.
There is a tendency in the debate around mass surveillance to attribute malign motives to everyone in government and the security services. This in turn alienates those in power, and promotes the belief that civil liberties campaigners are shrill, paranoid exaggerators! So this alternative formulation, which avoids the cod-psychological explanations about power, corruption, and malign motives, is very welcome.
Farron went on to point out that this does not absolve those politicians of blame for neglecting civil liberties. What they forget, he said, is that our laws need to be constructed so as to protect citizens from future corrupt governments. This rather obvious point is often lost on Ministers who are concerned with the here-and-now.
I’m glad that Malala Yousafzai did not win the Nobel Peace Prize.
This is not because I do not applaud her bravery and support her fantastic campaigning work. Rather, I worry about the effect of thrusting the prize onto someone so young.
Previous Nobel Laureates have reported that winning the prize is incredibly disruptive to their career. Peter Higgs, who was awarded the Chemistry prize last week, tried to escape media inquiries. But they tracked him down eventually,
Our media is full of stories of child prodigies pressurised into excellence and unhappiness. Child actors regularly seem to end up in rehab units, and the career trajectory of child pop-stars like Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus makes everyone uneasy. We angst over the plight of Royal babies, born into incredible wealth but no privacy. Continue reading
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