The Investigatory Powers Bill will be published tomorrow. The Home Secretary will set out her vision for what snooping powers the security services should have in their tool-box, and also what oversight parliament, the judiciary, and independent ‘watchdogs’ should have over the use of those powers.
I work for English PEN, one of the six organisations leading the Don’t Spy On Us campaign. Be in no doubt I will be sharing our analysis of the proposed new law and recommendations for improvement.
A constant issue regarding civil liberties (and one that we have discussed before on these pages) is how to convince members of the public to care about human rights when few of us ever actually experience a violation of those rights. In the past, I have discussed the idea of ‘everyday rights‘ and the notion that, even if we are not tortured or detained, our lives are made marginally worse when our rights are eroded, even in small ways. Continue reading “Surveillance: It's not all about you”
Dear Lord King: Ludditry is not cool, it's dangerous
Oh! This puts me in such a bad mood.
https://twitter.com/jjvincent/status/560082501075742721
Lord King is author of amendments tabled last week to the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill. They would have granted the government surveillance powers without proper checks and balances. Arguing in favour of the changes, Lord King admitted he did not use social media and did not understand apps like WhatsApp or SnapChat. Continue reading “Dear Lord King: Ludditry is not cool, it's dangerous”
The Defamation Act 2013: Complete & Unabridged
As is my wont, I made a book to illustrate this. Physical objects are useful props in debates like this: immediately illustrative, and useful to hang an argument and peoples’ attention on.
James Bridle is probably best known as the artist who first articulated ‘The New Aesthetic‘, but he has run many projects on books and technology. His project ‘The Iraq War‘ is a favourite of mine – the entire Wikipedia Edit History of the ‘Iraq War’ article, from 2005-2009, which stretches to twelve volumes. He’s also the creator of a Book of Tweets.
James’ projects are the inspiration of one of my own – The Defamation Act 2013: Complete & Unabridged. It collects together, in chronological order, every single parliamentary document published during the passage of the recent reform of our libel law. These include the various versions of the Bill (which I have previously published in a spliced together version, ‘Tracked Changes in the Defamation Bill‘), the parliamentary Hansard transcripts of the debates; and the amendment papers. Continue reading “The Defamation Act 2013: Complete & Unabridged”
Alan Turing Pardon: Why So Narrow?
https://twitter.com/Eastmad/status/332828506474037248
The Alan Turing Statutory Pardon Bill has been published on the Houses of Parliament website.
Turing was a mathematician and philosopher who cracked the Nazi Enigma code and invented electronic computing. He was also a homosexual, and was convicted of ‘Gross indecency between men’ in 1952. As a result he lost his security clearance, was subjected to chemical castration, and committed suicide when he was only 42.
This statutory pardon seeks to atone for the Government’s appalling treatment of a national hero.
Nevertheless, the idea of such a narrow pardon worries me a little. The implication seems to be that Turing gets a pardon because he achieved so much. But that should not be how the law and justice works. What about all those under-achievers and ordinary men who were convicted under the same iilliberal and unjust law? Why do they not get a pardon too?
Tracked Changes in the Defamation Bill
Jubilate! The Defamation Bill recieved Royal Assent yesterday. It is now the Defamation Act 2013.
Watching the legislative process up close has been fascinating. It fills me with confidence that candidate laws are put to such detailed and rigourous debate.
To give a sense of how a Bill changes as it passes through both Houses of Parliament, I have created a Defamation Bill (Tracked Changes) document. Download a PDF [223 KB] or a Word Document [49 KB]. It is based on the successive Bills and amendments found on the Houses of Parliament website. In the document, you can see how some clauses were tweaked, with the alteration of a word here or there. In other places you can see where whole clauses were added and then removed, as the House of Commons disagreed with the House of Lords. Continue reading “Tracked Changes in the Defamation Bill”