Lords: rise of CCTV is threat to freedom

[Azrael]

Azrael I like your point about State power coming with equally negative consequences as crime. That's not to say of course that we don't want to prevent crime, just that as anti-authoritarians we don't see blanket mass-surveillance as the means to prevent crime.

Thanks.

As you say above, authoritarians suggest that more state power is an answer to crime, but ignore its unwanted consequences. Most Labour MPs who think about this probably aren't frothing authoritarians, but they fail completely to grasp that we cannot trust the state, whoever happens to hold power.

 

[CyberRose]

Ah this is so much more civilised than on the Middle East forum

 

[moon23]

State murder is impossible as murder is by definition a lawless act.

Webster's has authoritarian as "of or pertaining to a governmental or political system, principle, or practice in which individual freedom is held as completely subordinate to the power or authority of the state, centered either in one person or a small group that is not constitutionally accountable to the people."

This cannot possibly be used to describe a death penalty executed after due process of law and jury hearings, as the individual has not been made "completely subordinate" to the power of the state: he's been given a lawyer, Miranda warning, the right to silence, the right to confront his accusers in open court and a unanimous jury verdict. The state relies on the people to convict.

Authoritarian governments don't have due process: they have a mockery of it. Due process is the heart of civil liberty.

Deterrence isn't proved one way or the other in the USA because capital punishment is retained as tokenism. Very, very few people are actually executed, often years after they've been sentenced.

Authoritarian government's have processes that they claim to be 'due'. If you define 'Due' process as being correct processes then of course your right to say this is at the heart of civil liberty. Sometimes a lack of process can also equate to increased civil liberty, so it’s not clear cut.

Again the same point exists with state murder, by semantic legal definition state murder is a paradox you’re right. I pointed it out as an example of how a state authority can legally classify different types of killing in different ways to suit its own agenda. States have self-justifying juridical frameworks. As such I reject the notion of capital punishment and prefer instead to call it by it’s true name – State Murder.

Our dear friend Focault (do I win a of being the first to mention him in a thread about surveillance and society) has something to say on the matter:

Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines.
P222.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

 

[moon23]

Thanks.

As you say above, authoritarians suggest that more state power is an answer to crime, but ignore its unwanted consequences. Most Labour MPs who think about this probably aren't frothing authoritarians, but they fail completely to grasp that we cannot trust the state, whoever happens to hold power.

Indeed most Labour MPs think they are acting in our best interest. They think in terms of liberal paternalism, that the state needs to intervene for the greatest good.

Personally I find this patronizing, and get frustrated at the negative and often unforeseen consequences their actions have on our civil liberties.

There are a few frothing at the mouth authoritarians though. I meet them often on street stalls, they say things like we should all be chipped or ID cards are a good thing if they get rid of all the liberals

Being an intellectual snob I prescribe this attitude to a general lack of intelligence combined with an emotional insecurity. I would call it a disease that we need to cure by putting all the authoritarians into re-education camps, but there is a somewhat amusing paradox there somewhere.

 

[moon23]

Ah this is so much more civilised than on the Middle East forum

Indeed we should now bath in a sense of smugness at our ability to carry out an intellgent and informed debate on an internet forum, a rare feat if ever I did see one.

I fear I must now debate and catch myself a train, it is after all a friday and the pub is calling me.

 

[Azrael]

Authoritarian government's have processes that they claim to be 'due'. If you define 'Due' process as being correct processes then of course your right to say this is at the heart of civil liberty. Sometimes a lack of process can also equate to increased civil liberty, so it’s not clear cut.

I'm not referring to individual processes but the conept of due process. The Wikipedia definition is for once pretty good: "Due process is the principle that the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law of the land, instead of respecting merely some or most of those legal rights."

You're right, a state can hide crimes behind semantics, but I don't believe that execution of premeditated murderers after jury trial is such a case. The alternatives are either relase after 10-20 years (which is not adaquate retribution for ending another's existence) or incarceration for life, which is to my mind far crueler than an execution. (Is it anything but barbaric to condemn Ian Huntly to some 60 years in a lawless pen, dodging razorblades and picking broken glass from his food?)

As for the Focault quote, I'd like to know what Focault would suggest as an alternative. That, and due process began development long before the Enlightenment, at least in England and Scotland.

 

[Azrael]

Ah this is so much more civilised than on the Middle East forum

If ever there was a case of damning with faint praise.

Last time I posted in a Middle East thread, I think they had yet to be exiled from the World Politics forum. So I don't think I've ever stepped into Urban's quarantine zone!

 

[moon23]

Hot of the Press NO2ID's press release on the issue:


For immediate release, 6th February 2009

One piece missing from Lords surveillance report

The House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution's report,
'Surveillance: Citizens and the State' published today [1] gives a
respectable voice to NO2ID [2] has been saying since 2004, and before.
Many of the 40-odd recommendations echo the demands of privacy
campaigners who have been dismissed as 'extremist' by ministers. But
there is one piece missing.

The report is silent on the massive information sharing powers in
Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, currently being debated
in Commons Committee [3]. This proposal appears in legislation to
coincide with the report, but has been a key part of the
'Transformational Government' database state agenda in official
documents for a long time[4]. It would allow departments to make
regulations for officials to take any information and use it for any
purpose, without any parliamentary debate.

Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator said:

`The report screams - Stop! Stop unwarranted surveillance. Stop
abusing, misusing and losing citizens' information. Stop building the
database state.

`But the government has just stamped on the accelerator. It is not listening.'


-ENDS-

Notes:

1) Full report available online (130 page PDF file, 567KB):
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldselect/ldconst/18/18.pdf

2) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and
the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of
'database state' initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing. The
background documents on the government's developing information
sharing habit are assembled at http://www.no2id.net/datasharing.php

3) NO2ID's briefing on the information sharing provisions in the
Coroners and Justice Bill is available here:
http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/2009-01-22-coroners-and-justice-bill-briefing.pdf

4) See http://www.foi.gov.uk/sharing/pubs.htm


For further information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact:
Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net) on
07974 230 839
Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308
Michael Parker (Press Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166