Scunthorpe disappears again.

This is another ignorant reflex that demostrates traditional tory values of stupidity and authoritarianism.

Come to Britain where the artist will very soon be fearing the censor.

There are times when it feels like the authoritarian arses of New Labour never lost power. This is a monumentally stupid idea, all cost, no benefit.

April Fool. Isn’t it?

@4 Sadly not, its been around for a couple of days. It would be so nice if ministers actually knew what they were talking about but Vaizey is just another lawyer/PR man turned political party zombie. Whenever I see politicians start wittering about computers I think of American sitcom My Name Is Earl where, upon finding a laptop, the thick one says “look, a porn machine”.

I’m seriously pissed off with O2 because I now have to register with an external agency if I want to view adult content on my phone.

I have the choice of either registering my credit card details with an organization I’ve never heard of before or visiting my local Carphone Warehouse with photo-ID and tell them I want to look at boobies.

Anonymity is essential for preserving free speech.

This is another ignorant reflex that demonstrates traditional tory values of stupidity and authoritarianism.

Following on from the traditional Labour values of stupidity and authoritarianism. I’ll trump your Vaizey with a Vaz any day.

We just have to hope the anarchic structure of the internet and the ingenuity of technology is flexible enough to resist those that want to decide what we can say or see.

Otherwise, in the future, we’ll look back on these years of internet freedom in absolute wonderment.

‘This is another ignorant reflex that demostrates traditional tory values of stupidity and authoritarianism.’

As Falco says, this isn’t any different than when Labour were in power – Keith Vaz was a hysterical authoritarian too.

This is a problem with the system as a whole: no organisation, government or otherwise, should have control over free speech.

@ 7 pagar

“Otherwise, in the future, we’ll look back on these years of internet freedom in absolute wonderment.”

I think that’s inevitable anyway.

@ 6

Anonymity is essential for preserving free speech.

Whilst I don’t like intrusions into private space either, I’m not sure the right to look at boobies is quite the same thing as freedom of speech……… or anything like as important.

1984 is happening! Wake up people! This is another attack on our freedom and rights. To be honest though, this is what I have come to expect from Tony Bliar, Gordon Broon, ZaNuLabour Party and there bloody Feminnazi Stasi PC brigade nanny state…oh yeah, right its the other lot who are doing it. I thought they were the good guys?

@ Flowerpower

I’m not sure the right to look at boobies is quite the same thing as freedom of speech……… or anything like as important.

Then you are wrong.

Partial or relative freedom is not freedom at all.

‘Whilst I don’t like intrusions into private space either, I’m not sure the right to look at boobies is quite the same thing as freedom of speech……… or anything like as important.’

It is from where I’m standing. Its no accident iPhones can be used one handed.

And besides which, ‘robust comment’ often uses profanity – so sites which are classed as ‘adult’ because of strong language will become impossible to access by people using disposable SIMs for reasons of anonymity.

And O2 have surely breached their terms of contract here.

Pagar @ 12

To be fair, when you strip away all the crap from this, it isn’t going to be a free speech issue, not really, no-one in the government is really al that interested in shutting down (or blocking) bloggs from the survivalists/self harm/anorexic etc web sites, though I can see a Minister of the Day using ‘access’ to the technology to stop it. This is about big business defending copyright material.

You feel that ‘the State’ should not be able to snoop into your private life. Okay, that is fair enough, but surely we should be equally and perhaps even more suspicious of huge multinationals having direct access (via a Government agency) to our hard drives? Surely it is big business we need fear undue interference?

If the State feels the need to stop people passing ‘kiddie porn’ from peer to peer, then I can see the good it does, but I can tell you this, I personally resent the implication that ‘Sony’ or whoever will have the ‘right’ to monitor who I send data too under any circumstances. If I want a relationship with Sony, Disney or United Artists then I will walk into their shop and/or onto a website and you can monitor me all you want there, but in my own front room? Are we saying that these people have the right to trawl through the internet records of the entire Country, looking for a combination of ones and zeros that ‘they’ own?

This is why Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four got it wrong, and if I was completely honest, what the Libertarian movement gets wrong too. It is not the mass collection of information by the State that we need worry about. Christ, who cares if the Government ‘know’ who was in your bed on the 27th of March 2011? In the fog of mass data, it is meaningless. The real problem is when seemingly private information can be bought and sold via huge companies and passed across to make direct value judgements that actually affect our lives that matter, that is what really scares me.

The fact that someone may have picked up something ‘dodgy’ on a foreign trip is embarrassing of course and you may have a red face in the doctor’s surgery, but (s)he is a professional and sees dozens of people every day.

On the other hand what if your line manager got a hold of your search engine results, for example? Or your bank details? Say you take out fifty quid at the ATM near the ‘Dog and Duck’ then another thirty by the time you get to the ‘four feathers’? The doctor needs to know what you have done to treat you, but the line manager is making judgements that affect your life every day. So does your insurance company, your private health care people, your mortgage provider and even your employer. Take it from me, there are plenty of legitimate targets for petrol bombs in this Country and it ain’t Fortman and Mason. These cunts are DETERMINED to get into every aspect of your life and it comes as no suprise that the Tories/New Labour stooges are bending over backwars to make it easy for them.

No, Pagar, you may fear the State, but I fear far more malevolent, and completely unaccountable people.

pagar @ 12

Then you are wrong. Partial or relative freedom is not freedom at all.

Rubbish. A free society is not one where there is no law or regulation. It is one where laws and regulations are moderate and sensible and not unduly oppressive. Freedom certainly does not flow from the blanket application of abstract principles but inheres in the diffusion of power among institutions and in the moderation of abstract principles according to the intuitions and customs of peoples.

it isn’t going to be a free speech issue, not really, no-one in the government is really al that interested in shutting down (or blocking) bloggs from the survivalists/self harm/anorexic etc web sites

If you give them the ability, chances are that somebody’s going to use it, sooner or later. Remember how the RIPA surveillance powers were only going to be used against suspected terrorists, and certainly not for trivial matters like checking whether people were putting their bins out on the wrong day?

If you give them the ability, chances are that somebody’s going to use it, sooner or later. Remember how the RIPA surveillance powers were only going to be used against suspected terrorists, and certainly not for trivial matters like checking whether people were putting their bins out on the wrong day?

Quite.

@ 16

Exactly. Those transgressions demonstrated that you can’t just trust the government and police when they claim they’ll only use their powers for good – you have to safely limit those powers in the first place.

Jim.

This is why Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four got it wrong, and if I was completely honest, what the Libertarian movement gets wrong too. It is not the mass collection of information by the State that we need worry about. Christ, who cares if the Government ‘know’ who was in your bed on the 27th of March 2011? In the fog of mass data, it is meaningless. The real problem is when seemingly private information can be bought and sold via huge companies and passed across to make direct value judgements that actually affect our lives that matter, that is what really scares me.

We should be concerned about all data retention and who has access to it; governments aren’t morally superior to corporations.

The fact that someone may have picked up something ‘dodgy’ on a foreign trip is embarrassing of course and you may have a red face in the doctor’s surgery, but (s)he is a professional and sees dozens of people every day.

If you’re alluding to Labour’s plan to electronically store medical records, I don’t see why we should not be concerned about who will have access to our records – it was more than doctors, nurses, and their receptionists.

On my phone, the definition of “adult content” is so broad that I can’t look at the homepage of a brewery. Can’t have kids’ minds corrupted by reading about beer!

This kind of thing illustrates exactly the ‘continuity of agenda’, notwithstanding a change at Westminster.

The threat seems to come through the changing way that copyright protection is being treated, from a civil to a criminal matter. The danger is that websites can be disappeared for ‘copyright violation’ and that this will be used to shut down critical content, especially when the plug will be pulled without warning or court action needed.

I think a driving force is the desire for mainstream media and the big corporations to impose themselves on the internet like so many feudal landowners.

I don’t think it’s relevant to what extent this is the state or the corporations, this doesn’t alter the fact that it is very dangerous to freedom.

@Dunc #16:

I fear you are sadly misinformed; RIPA grants no powers to local authorities. The clue is in the name.

More generally – can we reach a consensus on Liberal Conspiracy as to upon which issues the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are to be considered reliable sources of factual information on matters of political controversy? Do we, for example, trust an unreferenced report in the DT about the surveillance – or indeed any – activities of Southwark “District” Council?

@Dunc #16 contd:

Sorry; forgot this passage:

“Remember how the RIPA surveillance powers were only going to be used against suspected terrorists.”

Nope – there was never such a time. On the one hand, local authorities have never been allowed to authorise (under RIPA) any powers for the purpose of counter-terrorism. On the other the use of RIPA authorisations by LAs is currently “for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder”; initially they were also allowed to authorise for the purpose of protecting public health.

@22/23: Fair enough on the “counter-terrorism” point (I should have said “serious crime”), but my general point (that powers, once granted, tend to be used as widely as the relevant legislation allows, rather than in the more limited ways which were originally advertised) still stands.

Full marks for pedantry though – you’re approaching Tim Worstall levels. So it is will great pleasure that I point out that RIPA does allow “Any county council or district council in England, a London borough council, the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority, the Council of the Isles of Scilly, and any county council or county borough council in Wales” to authorise surveillance activities under sections 28 & 29 (see Schedule 1 – Relevant Public Authorities, para 17).

On the subject of sources, perhaps you’d prefer The Guardian, The Times, The BBC, or The Law Gazette. You might also be interested in the Second Report on Surveillance: Citizens and the State of the House of Lords Constitution Committee on the subject, specifically chapter 4, paras 164 – 178, dealing with the powers delegated to Local Authorities under RIPA, which you apparently believe not to exist.

Many governments – like those of China and Iran – are sufficiently smart to recognise the continuing dangers to the stability and authority of those respective regimes from easy access to news from international sources and the opportunity to retrieve archived news by using the internet search engines.

Consider the implications – with easy access to the internet, it’s so much easier to document broken political promises, check government claims against retrievable facts, access heavyweight research studies and governments can no long spin out contradictory messages to different audiences without the fear of being quickly caught out.

Why would any rational being suppose it would be different here? The difference here is in getting ISPs to agree to implementing effective control measures against the wishes of their client users. And a big continuing problem would be constraining access to foreign news media.

New Labour tried a different tack. New Labour’s bright idea was to snoop instead – but there was a backlash so [April 2009]:

Councils in England and Wales face new restrictions on the use of surveillance powers for minor offences such as dog fouling and littering.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa 2000 – from Blunkett’s time as Homes Secretary) allows public authorities to intercept phone and e-mail data and use CCTV to spy on suspected criminals.

But Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has launched a review after fears it was being used for “trivial” offences.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8003123.stm

Another way of snooping is to track online use of child porn – and which right minded person could possibly object to that? Of course, if in the course of monitoring child porn online, other useful political or criminal intelligence is incidentally picked up then that information won’t be wasted.

Btw I wonder what happened to that review started by Jacqui Smith?

@ 23 Robin

“Nope – there was never such a time. On the one hand, local authorities have never been allowed to authorise (under RIPA) any powers for the purpose of counter-terrorism. On the other the use of RIPA authorisations by LAs is currently “for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder”; initially they were also allowed to authorise for the purpose of protecting public health.”

I believe you’re right, but I also distinctly remember them being sold to the public as unpleasant laws that were unfortunately necessary to deal with the terrorist threat.

Jim @ 14

You feel that ‘the State’ should not be able to snoop into your private life. Okay, that is fair enough, but surely we should be equally and perhaps even more suspicious of huge multinationals having direct access (via a Government agency) to our hard drives? Surely it is big business we need fear undue interference?

Ahhh, Jim.

It’s almost touching that your faith in the democracy illusion convinces you that the interests of government and corporations somehow diverge.

You probably believe that there will be a thoughtful process involving our elected politicians before they decide not to break up the banks. You are happy that they will protect your interests when Murdoch tries to own the whole media.

It is not the information they have about you that should concern you. They already know all about you, Jim.

What you need to worry about is that they stop you from accessing information on the internet. That way they stop people like me from telling you the the truth.

If the State feels the need to stop people passing ‘kiddie porn’ from peer to peer, then I can see the good it does

Can you indeed. I have to say I tend to think it does very little good whatever.

If you assume that paedophiles are individuals with, for whatever reason, a damaged or different sex drive are they culpable for that?

And if we further assume that their sexual impulse is no more “curable” than, say, a homosexual impulse, does it really do no good to allow their predilection to be indulged in a virtual world rather than the real one?

Of course sexual relations with a child is criminal because the child is incapable of giving informed consent and therefore the production of child pornography is undoubtedly criminal.

But viewing it or sharing it?

Are we saying that we would prefer these people to satisfy their sexuality in the real world by abusing children?

Of course the internet makes the identification of paedophiles a great deal easier, but are we really saying that they are committing the same offence as if they were committing actual abuse?

I know these are difficult areas but I don’t believe my paedophile neighbour looking at kiddie porn on the internet is committing the same kind of offence as he would be if he were molesting my child.

And if the first prevented the second……….

@26

Your logic here is bizarre – it’s wrong for someone to create images of child sexual abuse (let’s drop the “child pornography” tag, please) but it’s ok for someone else to view such images…because it may lead to the images not being created? Forgive me for not understanding what you’re getting at here.

@7 pagar

Predictably you pick up on New Labour. Notwithstanding Vaz their authoritarianism had quite a different feel from this traditional tory idiocy. They copied it and tried to do it better.

@ Mr S Pill

it’s ok for someone else to view such images…because it may lead to the images not being created?

No, of course not.

Because, in the world as it is, it may lead to another child not being abused.

There is an argument that images of child abuse encourage further abuse. I’m just not sure it’s valid.

@29 and what would you require as proof, you fucking idiot?

@ 26 Pagar

Whether viewing the images encourages abuse or acts as an outlet, by paying for the images they’re subsidising the abuse.

@29 pagar

are there any stats/studies regarding the likelihood of offending-or-not by people who view images of child sexual abuse?

I dislike this argument that paedophiles should be allowed to pass around images of what is effectively a crime scene. We don’t allow rapists (or potential rapists) to have videos or images of rape*.

*There is a massive difference between the (disturbing, to me, but whatever floats your boat) so-called “fantasy” rape pornsites which feature actors, and an actual film of an actual rape.

@pagar

oh, and Chaise @31 makes another point I was going to raise.

@Bob B #26:

“The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa 2000 – from Blunkett’s time as Homes Secretary) allows public authorities to intercept phone and e-mail data”

Untrue. LAs are permitted by other legislation to conduct reverse lookups, and obtain billing information, and RIPA controls their usage of those powers; but LAs have no powers to access even the metadata, let alone the content, of phone calls or emails.

“…and use CCTV to spy on suspected criminals.”

No. Other legislation permits LAs to conduct covert surveillance including using CCTVs; RIPA controls that usage.

@Bob B #24:

“Ripa 2000 – from Blunkett’s time as Homes Secretary”

Time travel is not an accomplishment I had previously associated with David Bluniett, who became Home Secretary following the election in 2001.

@Chaise Guevara #25:

“I believe you’re right, but I also distinctly remember them being sold to the public as unpleasant laws that were unfortunately necessary to deal with the terrorist threat”

I’d love a cite for that; but in any event, specifically as it applies to LAs, there are no new powers, but restrictions on the use of existing powers. More particularly; all usage by local authorities of their pre-existing surveillance powers risks infringing article 8 of the ECHR, incorporated into English law by the Human Rights Act – the right to privacy. RIPA provides a safe harbour against claims in this respect, provided its procedures are properly followed – which includes proper consideration of whether use of the powers is necessary and proportionate given the object sought to be achieved.

@35: “Ripa 2000 – from Blunkett’s time as Homes Secretary. – Time travel is not an accomplishment I had previously associated with David Bluniett, who became Home Secretary following the election in 2001.”

Fair correction. My memory was muddling this news from 2002:

Blunkett retreats on email ‘snooper charter’

Ministers were in full retreat last night over plans to give more public bodies powers to “snoop” on private communications, including emails and mobile telephone calls.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, pulled the plug on a debate after being warned that his proposals faced defeat in the Lords and a rebellion by Labour MPs who fear the new legislation poses a threat to civil liberties.

A draft order extending the reach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to include local councils and government quangos was withdrawn at the last minute and will be considered on the Commons floor next Monday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3295910/Blunkett-retreats-on-email-snooper-charter.html

Btw what ever did happen with that review of RIPA powers announced by Jacqui Smith?

@ 35 Robin Levitt

“I’d love a cite for that”

I’ll look one up later, when I’m not busy drinking.

“but in any event, specifically as it applies to LAs, there are no new powers, but restrictions on the use of existing powers. ”

OK. My knowledge of specific legislation here is limited, and I’m not necessarily thinking about RIPAs or anything else specifically, but rather anti-terror laws in general.

I remember a lot of debate under Tony Blair about bringing in new powers to help fight terrorism, mainly focusing on detention and surveillance. I remember Labour politicians assuaging people’s concerns about civil rights and privacy by saying that these would only be used to fight terror and other serious crimes. I also remember news stories – and I’m aware that these may have been inaccurate – shortly after the new powers were brought in claiming that they were being used for extremely dodgy purposes. One was about spying on parents who were committing fraud to get their kids into desirable schools, another (though I think this was debunked) was about getting someone thrown out after heckling at one of Blair’s speeches.

You’re obviously knowledgable on this issue, and I doubt that I got these impressions in a vacuum, so are you aware of the laws or proposed laws I’m talking about here? This is a genuine admission of ignorance – all this happened back when I was young enough to take many news sources at face value, so I wasn’t in the habit of double-checking and may well have been misled. The whole thing’s been accepted as “background knowledge” in my mind, and I’d prefer to be corrected than to argue from an incorrect standpoint.

@34: “Untrue. LAs are permitted by other legislation to conduct reverse lookups, and obtain billing information, and RIPA controls their usage of those powers; but LAs have no powers to access even the metadata, let alone the content, of phone calls or emails.”

I was relying on a news report on the BBC website. Try these:

Big Brother Watch, has released a research report on local authority covert surveillance operations, which names Newcastle upon Tyne as the worst offender with 231 snooping operations in the past 2 years.

The report reveals that 372 local authorities have used their powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to launch over 8500 covert surveillance operations. Some of them were as mundane as ensuring whether a pet dog is wearing a collar or people repairing their vehicles on the road.
http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/36609

Councils in England and Wales have used controversial spying laws 10,000 times in the past five years, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7964411.stm

Surveillance powers have been used by Wokingham Borough Council to spy on one of its own employees.

A Freedom of Information Act request has revealed the council used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to snoop on a member of staff suspected of theft.

The council also used RIPA in four other investigations related to residents suspected of benefit fraud. No prosecutions have been brought about as a result of any of the investigations, which have taken place since April 2008.
http://www.getwokingham.co.uk/news/s/2071930_council_snoops_on_its_staff

GUILDFORD Borough Council has used “anti-terror” legislation to snoop on its own staff, an investigation by the Surrey Advertiser found.
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2030686_guildford_council_spied_on_its_own_staff

Meanwhile Labour continue their authoritarian stance on controlling what you see online.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/01/police_should_crack_down_on_online_incitement/

Pagar @ 26

I think you miss my point. I believe that this legalisation is not being proposed because ‘The State’ needs or wants these powers for their own needs. I firmly believe that the ‘State’ requires these powers to further the cause of big business. Not ‘business’, by the way, ‘big business’. The huge multi-nationals that are able to walk among us yet seem to be immune from our laws. I genuinely do not understand the need to ascribe opinions regarding banking and Murdoch press to me. I cannot think of a single post I have made here or anywhere else that has supported such a view.

In fact, any posts I have made on these subjects will have been against these organisations vicelike grip they have on our society. Both New Labour & the Tories were in thrall to these groups and have bent over backwards and acted in a completely lickspittle fashion to these people, with Murdoch in particular getting the complete forelock tugging treatment.

About thirty five years ago, I was given a hundred quid from a bequeath. My father put the money into a building society account, rather than a bank (or a bike, as I wanted at the time). I was a loyal member of the Bradford and Bingley right up to the moment they were de-mutualised, a shareholder. I was given a vote and actually voted against it. Needless to say, I was in a minority and I was ‘rewarded’ with shares in a new bank. The new bank got into the buy to let market and went tits up and my ‘shares’ became useless. Had more people been less greedy and the various building societies stayed building societies, perhaps we would not have had the crisis. However, thanks to the banks coalescing into huge amorphous blocks, the customer lost competition and ‘shareholders’ became greedy and the rest, as they say, is history.

So, no, I am NOT in favour of a small number of huge banking chains dotted on every high street.

As for the dirty digger…

As for your remarks on child abuse, it seems that you managed to get balls deep into that quagmire and I have nothing to add to the comments made so far.

@Chaise Guevara #37:

“You’re obviously knowledgable on this issue, and I doubt that I got these impressions in a vacuum, so are you aware of the laws or proposed laws I’m talking about here?”

I hope I know something about the Act. As I’m not involved in the security services, however, I have less immediate knowledge of the law relevant to them.

Having said that: under the Interception of Communications Act 1985 the security services were entitled, upon warrant issued by the SoS, to wiretap etc; those powers were re-enacted and updated (to take account of different methods of communication), and the procedure for their exercise by the security services was amended, by RIPA. There were also provisions enabling the SoS to require CSPs (Communications Service Providers) to ensure that there were facilities to enable interception if a warrant was in fact issued. That last is probably what you were thinking of.

I neither made nor implied any comment on the law as it applies to the security services; what annoys me beyond measure is the persistence reference to the use by LAs of “RIPA powers”. (To Bob B) The day Big Brother Watch properly represents what RIPA actually does is a very long way off….

LAs have very extensive duties to enforce regulatory legislation, from things like flytipping and littering to underage sales to street trading and counterfeit goods to overweight vehicles to enforcing trading standards to unlawful evictions. They have, and need, investigatory powers to discharge those duties.

RIPA, so far as surveillance is concerned, catches covert surveillance for the purpose of a specific investigation or operation likely to result in the acquisition of private information about a person or persons otherwise than by way of immediate response to circumstances. For example, arranging to go to a known flytip site to hide behind a hedge and try to identify the flytippers is probably caught by the Act; so is asking the Council’s CCTV operators to focus on that site.

Use of a Council’s surveillance powers to monitor dog-fouling is likely to be disproportionate. Use of those powers to investigate employee misconduct short of crime is entirely outwith RIPA. Use of those powers to investigate employees suspected of stealing would be caught by RIPA.

Use to investigate the fraud involved in lying to the Council as to where you live so as to deprive someone else’s child of the school place to which s/he would was entitled – arguably not disproportionate. The specific case (Poole BC) on that was in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal last year; the judgment is online, and shows that there were major problems in the way that Poole had gone about considering the surveillance, from not identifying the actual crime under investigation to failing to deal with the massive collateral intrusion involved in surveillance of young children as part of the investigation.

UKL @ 19

If you’re alluding to Labour’s plan to electronically store medical records, I don’t see why we should not be concerned about who will have access to our records – it was more than doctors, nurses, and their receptionists.

No, I wasn’t alluding to the electronic storage of data by the NHS or any other Government body. I do not really have a problem with collecting such data as the type of diseases we may have caught, the number of rooms in a house, where we went on holiday or much of the data that we supply to the State to be used in providing services. Medical records, the age of our children, the car we drive or whatever.

I see that as a passive collecting of perfectly benign data. Data that will be used for the specific purpose that it is intended. Of course any organisation can and sometimes will abuse that data and it goes without saying that Governments of the day can abuse laws. That is a different issue.

My fear, based on what I have seen, read or heard, is that this legalisation will give ‘big business’ the ability to trawl through everyone’s internet footprints looking for dirt.

On another occasion I expressed the opinion that capitalism (big business) was amoral, and occasionally would act in immoral fashion, if there were sufficient profits to be made. I have heard so many people who feel it necessary to boycott a census because it symbolised State interference. Yet, here we have some of the World’s biggest conglomerates snooping into the lives of millions of law-abiding people looking to see if two people may be swapping the latest Justin Beiber single? For fucks sake, if it is wrong for a government to snoop on someone using their bin, then why the fuck is it ‘okay’ for Sony (or the police acting as an agent of Sony) to hack into my computer to see if I have an ‘illegal’ download?

Why is the staunchest civil libertarian (large or small ‘l’) feel the need to complain when the government wants to look in their bins, but yet feels it unnecessary to castigate a completely unaccountable body from treating me as a serf who must forelock my way through every interaction I make on the internet?

“Why is the staunchest civil libertarian (large or small ‘l’) feel the need to complain when the government wants to look in their bins, but yet feels it unnecessary to castigate a completely unaccountable body from treating me as a serf who must forelock my way through every interaction I make on the internet?”

Because they’re not actually a libertarian but just pro-business? Y’know, the type of folk who believe that people should be allowed to do absolutely anything they like except form a union? That’s my guess, anyway.

For fucks sake, if it is wrong for a government to snoop on someone using their bin, then why the fuck is it ‘okay’ for Sony (or the police acting as an agent of Sony) to hack into my computer to see if I have an ‘illegal’ download?

It isn’t OK. Who – apart from the government and Sony – has said or indicated that it is?

UKL @ 44

Okay then. Should it be illegal for ‘big business’ to employ any agency (including themselves) snooping into the private lives of the general population.

A prime example being looking at the genetic code of a potential client/employee? Or the credit rating, criminal records, download history, file sharing history? Smoking habits, drinking habits/speeding/search engine results etc?

Yes or no.

Now replace ‘big business’ with ‘Government’? Yes or No?

Why is it that the ‘Right’ seem concerned with only the second part?

Jim,

IMV business and government must be able to justify their ‘snooping’ or be prohibited from doing it.

WRT your specific examples:

“genetic code of a potential client/employee?” – can’t think of a good reason
“credit rating” – except for a loan application or similar, can’t think of a good reason.
“criminal records” – sitting on the fence here, because while I’d like to know such a background of my employees, I want people to be able to put their pasts behind them and start anew.
“download history, file sharing history? search engine results” – not unless there is reasonable suspicion of a criminal offence and a warrant
“Smoking habits, drinking habits/speeding?” – can’t think of a good reason

Why is it that the ‘Right’ seem concerned with only the second part?

I don’t know. I think we ought to be concerned with both.

UKL @ 47

I don’t know. I think we ought to be concerned with both.

I dare say you do think you ‘ought’ to be concerned wit both, but why is the evidence point squarely at the fact that you are only concerned with ‘Government’ snooping?

Is there a huge movement among the ‘Right’ against insurance companies attempting to screen out the genetically impure from taking out policies? Or all those private eyes snooping up on insurance claiments, for example? Or carrying out credit checks?

Because, if there is, I haven’t seen it.

Jim,

I dare say you do think you ‘ought’ to be concerned wit both, but why is the evidence point squarely at the fact that you are only concerned with ‘Government’ snooping?

What evidence?

Is there a huge movement among the ‘Right’ against insurance companies attempting to screen out the genetically impure from taking out policies? Or all those private eyes snooping up on insurance claiments, for example? Or carrying out credit checks?

I don’t know why you ask me about the Right.

UKL @48

The ‘evidence’ I am refering o is every ‘Right Wing’ blog I have ever witnessed. I have yet to come arcross anyone ith much to say about companies using snoopers to to intrude in ourlives. So far, most of the stuff I have read regarding snooping and intusion is about Governments.

Jim,

The ‘evidence’ I am refering o is every ‘Right Wing’ blog I have ever witnessed. I have yet to come arcross anyone ith much to say about companies using snoopers to to intrude in ourlives. So far, most of the stuff I have read regarding snooping and intusion is about Governments.

You wrote,

“I dare say you do think you ‘ought’ to be concerned wit both, but why is the evidence point squarely at the fact that you are only concerned with ‘Government’ snooping?”

Forgive me for thinking that “you” meant me.

Ukl @ 51

we may be at cross purposes here. I think you used the term (@47):

I don’t know. I think we ought to be concerned with both.

Anyway, leave that as it is.

I can think of a number of scenarios were the Right/Libertarians are absolutely incensed by the intrusion by the State on private lives in one case (speed cameras) where they are perfectly happy for the State to film incapacity benefit claimants playing football, for example. Of course, it goes without saying that the same people rarely have issues with insurance companies executing intricate snooping when it comes to weaselling out of insurance claims on the flimsiest loopholes.

Jim, I did write that. All I’m wondering is why you keep asking me about what the Right thinks.

I do not identify with the Right. I do not speak for the Right. I don’t hold a candle for governments or corporations. What concerns me is risks.

As it happens, while I updated my blog I did write much more about government snooping than corporate snooping; this was because the Government during that period seemed inordinately and recklessly fond of surveillance and collecting all kinds of data, allowing all and sundry access to it, starting project after project, and insufficiently justifying most any of it (contrary to the Data Protection Principles in its own legislation), and a substantial proportion of the public seemed to think this was all OK (or were ignorant about it all).

Again, people ought to be concerned about governments and corporations – other people – ‘snooping’.