The Convention on Modern Liberty

The first part of my write-up on yesterday's events has been published on Magna Carta Plus.

British Readers: Write to your MPs

Phil Booth of NO2ID, quoted by Guy Herbert on Samizdata:

At the Convention on Modern Liberty, I launched NO2ID's request that everyone at the convention – and around the UK – tells their MP right now that they refuse their consent to having their information shared under any "information sharing order", a power currently being slipped onto the statute books in clause 152 of the coroners and justice bill .

Please tell yours too. It's important, and urgent – and something that only YOU can do. If you never have before, now's the time to write to your MP – in a letter, or via www.WriteToThem.com.

Jack Straw has been making noises that could signal a 'compromise', but the only acceptable action is to remove clause 152 entirely from the bill. It is not linked to any other clause, despite being sandwiched between other powers and so-called safeguards offered to the information commissioner. It cannot be improved, and Straw can't be allowed to merely "dilute" it. Clause 152 just has to go.

It's imperative that in coming days every MP hears from his or her constituents. Please tell them you refuse consent to having your information, taken for one purpose, arbitrarily used for any other purpose. And ask them to vote clause 152 off the bill.

I've done it, I urge anyone concerned about this measure to do it.

Reminder: The Convention on Modern Liberty 28th Feb

Just a reminder that on the 28th February, the Convention on Modern Liberty gets underway in London with parallel sessions in Glasgow, Belfast, Manchester, Cardiff, Cambridge and Bristol.

Sunny Hundal on the Convention on Modern Liberty

[Update: Details of the Blogger's Summit are now up at the Convention website]

Sunny Hundal, blogging at Liberal Conspiracy, has posted his own take on the Convention on Modern Liberty. In particular he highlights the panel discussion for bloggers:

So, what does this mean for you?

openDemocracy have been kind enough to offer a special panel discussion for bloggers, which will be organised by Liberal Conspiracy. I would like to give an activist feel, not just a space for a calm talking-heads discussion with people coming out more frustrated than they went in.

Over the coming weeks, we need to ask:
- how we should look at privacy differently;
- how different powers affect our liberties, uniting football fans, clubbers, Muslims and even technologists.
- what can be done about it.

Ideally, I’d like to see a situation where, by the time we get to the event, we are looking to get organised and move forward, not just reiterate the issues that could have been discussed online anyway.

In my view the Convention has the potential to be a turning point leading to the halting and reversal of the erosion of civil liberties over the past 10 to 15 years in the UK. If people think hard about what needs to come out of the Convention, as Sunny suggests here, it will help to ensure that the Convention will become such a turning point.

[Thanks to Guy Aitchison for alerting me to Sunny's article.]

Convention on Modern Liberty in Glasgow and Belfast

I posted earlier about the Convention on Modern Liberty on the 28th February 2009.

The venue and draft programme of the Glasgow Convention are now up. The venue is: Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Strathclyde, James Weir Building, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow G1 1XJ.

Details of the Belfast Convention are also up now.

Convention on Modern Liberty: 28th February 2009

The Convention on Modern Liberty is a convention being organised for the 28th February 2009. To quote from the website:

"A call to all concerned with attacks on our fundamental rights and freedoms under pressure from counter-terrorism, financial breakdown and the database state"

This looks like it will be an interesting set of events, with conventions planned in London, Belfast, Birmingham, Cambridge, Glasgow, Manchester, Southampton and Swansea.

I'll post more news when I get it.

Amnesty International launches petition against "42 days"

[Hat tip: UK Liberty]

Amnesty International have launched an online petition against the British government’s proposals to allow people to be detained for up to 42 days without charge if they’re suspected of terrorism. At the time of writing, it has 2856 signatures.

Meanwhile, The Times is reporting that the government have decided not to use the Parliament Act should the 42 days proposal be defeated in the House of Lords. The Counter Terrorism Bill returns to the Lords later this week.

Why should civil libertarians back David Davis's re-election?

My answer to this question can be found here.

Pledge to help David Davis win his by-election

Over at Pledgebank.

What David Davis is talking about.

In his resignation speech, David Davis talks of the "slow strangulation" of fundamental freedoms. The articles in this blog already document some of this. You can follow some of the links under the topics list in the side bar on the left or otherwise search the blog for articles of interest.

However more documentation can be found over at Magna Carta Plus. The latest article provides some pointers to get you started.

Scientology is a cult...

...according to this court judgement from Judge Latey, who repeatedly describes Scientology as a cult:

In Re: T Minors (Transcript of judgments given on 10th December 1975) the Court of Appeal was concerned with children one of whose parents was a member of another and very different sect. In the course of his judgement Lord Justice Scarman (as he then was) stressed that "it is conceded that there is nothing immoral or socially obnoxious in the beliefs and practices of this sect". Scientology is both immoral and socially obnoxious. Mr. Kennedy did not exaggerate when he termed it "pernicious". In my judgement it is corrupt, sinister and dangerous. It is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has as its real objective money and power for Mr.

Hubbard, his wife and those close to him at the top. It is sinister because it indulges in infamous practices both to its adherents who do not toe the line unquestioningly and to those outside who criticise or oppose it. It is dangerous because it is out to capture people, especially children and impressionable young people, and indoctrinate and brainwash them so that they become the unquestioning captives and tools of the cult, withdrawn from ordinary thought, living and relationships
with others.

Also, here is the definition of the word "cult" from the Compact Oxford English Dictionary online:

cult

• noun 1 a system of religious worship directed towards a particular figure or object. 2 a small religious group regarded as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. 3 something popular or fashionable among a particular section of society.

It seems to me, from reading Judge Latey's judgement, that Scientology falls under the second definition above. Why am I saying this now? Because there are those seeking to prevent people from being able to describe Scientology as a cult, including the City of London Police, according to the Register:

His sign read: "Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult."

Within five minutes of arriving, the teenager was approached by a female police officer and told he was not allowed to use the word "cult" to describe Scientology, and that the Inspector in charge would make a decision. Soon afterwards officers again approached, read Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 and handed him this notice.

The Act makes it an offence to display "any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby".

The Register article also states:

City of London Police gave us this statement:

City of London police had received complaints about demonstrators using the words 'cult' and 'Scientology kills' during protests against the Church of Scientology on Saturday 10 May.

Following advice from the Crown Prosecution Service some demonstrators were warned verbally and in writing that their signs breached section five of the Public Order Act 1986.

One demonstrator, a juvenile, continued to display a placard despite police warnings and was reported for an offence under section five. A file on the case will be sent to the CPS.

I hope this case gets thrown out, otherwise people's ability to say what they believe to be true, and engage in peaceful protest, will have been seriously undermined.

Some news items

Here's a brief roundup to help catch up on recent developments in various areas:

• The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill is now The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. I'll comment on this later at Magna Carta Plus, for now here is the response and discussion from some other campaigners against this bill.
  
• An e-petitions web page has been set up at the Prime Minister's web site, and one of the petitions subsequently created is an anti-ID cards petition, which has had thousands of signatures so far. These petitions will apparently be sent to the PM, once completed, and a response given to them.
  
• The Liberal Democrats are asking for nominations for legislation to be repealed in a "Freedom Bill", and have identified 10 pieces of legislation they think should be repealed, including the Identity Cards Act and the legislation that introduced control orders.
  

Anyway that's all for now.

Renew for Freedom

With the passing of the Identity Cards Act 2006, the law enabling the creation of the national identity register (NIR) and accompanying ID card in Britain, No2ID has launched its Renew for Freedom campaign.

The idea is to get as many people as possible to renew their passports during the month of May (i.e. this month!). Those that do so will end up with a passport valid for 10 years and will do so before the point at which renewing passports will entail registering on the NIR.

The government has so far indicated that, from 2008 onwards, passport renewals will entail registering on the NIR and getting a card (though the card, but only the card, can be opted out of until 2010). They are keen to get as many people onto the system as possible. Clearly if the scheme is to be scrapped, it will help to ensure that as many people as possible refuse to register. If the numbers are large enough it will make compelling people to get a card unviable.

Renewing your passport now will therefore enable you to hold out against having to register on the NIR for longer than it would otherwise. Also, renewing now minimises the risk of being compelled to register on the NIR should the government move the timetable forward.

Tory peers cave in and let the Identity Cards Bill become an Act

Tory peers have accepted an amendment to the Identity Cards Bill allowing people renewing passports to opt out of getting an ID card until 2010. However they still have to register on the system, which means this "compromise" is nothing of the sort. So much for the Tory party defending civil liberties.

More details here.

Magna Carta Plus News

For some years now I've been contributing to the Magna Carta Plus website(MCP), and recently I've been in charge of its news service, which has now been revamped as a weblog.

MCP is a civil liberties website and its news service aims to cover developments in civil liberties across the world, albeit with a UK bias. My efforts on civil liberties will focus mainly on the news 'blog there and in contributing further articles to MCP.

This blog will remain in operation, however its focus will move away from civil liberties into other areas of politics.

ID card roadshow in Edinburgh tomorrow

Apparently, the government's identity cards "roadshow", a charm offensive the govt is using to try to win over the public on the proposals, will be hitting Edinburgh tomorrow according to the Glasgow No2ID website:

On Sunday 11th September, it was announced that the Home Office would be starting a 7 day "biometric roadshow" to try to sell the concept of ID cards to the British public. The roadshow started today with Andy Burnham MP, minister for ID cards, visiting Manchester Airport on Monday to show off the Home Office's dreams for biometric technology - BBC story (appeared Sunday afternoon).

The Home Office are trying to keep news of these events secret before they occur. On Monday afternoon they flatly refused to let me know if there were any plans for the roadshow to come to Scotland. The Home Office did not make a press release about the Manchester event public until it had already started.

Despite the Home Office refusing to tell us about future dates and venues, we have learnt that the roadshow will be at the Gyle shopping centre in Edinburgh on Wednesday 14th September. Andy Burnham will be there from 11:00 to 12:00.

If you can possibly get to Edinburgh on Wednesday to join in a small protest, hand out a few leaflets and challenge a minister to answer some of the questions that they have been avoiding, then please let me know. Or just turn up, if you prefer.

Sorry about the short notice, but the Home Office are trying to keep this quiet. We need all the help we can get - please get in touch: glasgow@no2id.net

The Queen's Speech

Today, the Queen set out the government's legislative programme for the next parliamentary session. The full speech is available online here. As expected, the human livestock bill Identity Cards Bill has been reintroduced, as has the proposal to make "incitement to religious hatred" a criminal offence.

Both of these have implications for civil liberties. The former will give the government another means by which to interfere in people's lives and keep tabs on what people are doing whilst the latter is likely to make criticism of religious beliefs a risky affair and thus restrict freedom of speech.

A list of the bills being introduced can be found here. It is likely that the Identity Cards Bill and the incitement to religious hatred bill will not be the only legislation attacking civil liberties if this government's record is anything to go by.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005: Summary

The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, i.e. the control orders legislation, is available online here.
This is the version of the legislation that has become law. This article summarises the key features of the Act.

Sections 1 to 4 set out the powers to create control orders. The main points are:

• Control orders have two forms: derogating control orders are those incompatible with the right to liberty set out in article 5 of the ECHR and thus require a derogation from that article, non-derogating control orders are those which do not derogate from article 5.
• Control orders can be imposed on a person by a court on application by the Home Secretary, except for non-derogating control orders where the Home Secretary can impose an order without first going through the courts if, in his opion, it is urgent.
• Control orders can impose any obligation that the Home Secretary (or court where appropriate) believes is necessary for "purposes connected with" preventing or restricting the involvement of the person in "terrorism-related activity".
• Possible obligations include prohibitions or restrictions on a person's possession of specified articles and substances; their use of specified facilities; who they can communicate or associate with; their work, occupation, business or other specified activities; their movements and their place of residence.
• Other possible obligations include requirements on the person to surrender specified possessions for the duration of the order; to allow access to and searches of their place of residence or any other premisses they have access to; to allow items to be removed from their residence/premisses for testing and to remain in a particular place for specified times or periods or generally.
  
• Terrorism-related activity is defined as activity one or more of the following: the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism; conduct which facilitates the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism; conduct which encourages the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism; or conduct which gives support or assistance to individuals known or believed to be involved in terrorism-related activity.
• Terrorism is defined as it is under Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
• The Home Secretary can impose a non-derogating control order on a person if he has "reasonable grounds for suspecting" someone is or has been involved in terrorism related activity, and if he considers it necessary to do so for to protect members of the public from "a risk of terrorism".
• Non-derogating control orders last for 12 months but can be renewed by the Home Secretary.
• Courts must give permission for the Home Secretary's application for a non-derogating control order unless they find that the decision to make such a control order is "obviously flawed". They can also quash specific obligations if they believe the decision to impose them is "obviously flawed".
• For a derogating control order to be imposed, there must be a public emergency resulting in derogation from article 5 of the ECHR in force.
• A court can impose a derogating control order if it is satisfied, on balance of probabilities, that the person concerned is involved in terrorism-related activity and if it considers the control order necessary for purposes connected to protecting the public from a risk of terrorism. Note that my earlier article on control orders was thus mistaken about the burden of proof for derogating control orders -- house arrest would use the balance of probabilities, but non-derogating orders would not.
  
• Derogating control orders expire after 6 months unless renewed.

Section 5 enables a person to be arrested and detained by the police as soon as the Home Secretary makes an application for a derogating control order. This detention can last for upto 48 hours, or with court approval, a further 48 hours.

Section 6 stipulates that derogating control orders can only have effect if a derogation from article 5 of the ECHR is in force. Such a derogation is made by the Home Secretary making an order and putting it before both Houses of Parliament. The order to derogate ceases to have effect 40 days after it has been made, unless both Houses approve of the order. If approved an order lasts for 12 months, but can be renewed by Parliament.

Section 7 sets out various matters on modifying and proving control orders including giving the police the power to enter any premisses, by force if necessary, to search for someone who is to be subjected to a control order, where they suspect the person to be on those premisses.

Section 9 creates various offences. It is an offence to contravene an obligation imposed by a control order, punishable by upto 5 yrs in prison. Obstructing officials who try to enter premisses to search for someone subject to a control order is an offence carrying upto 1 yr (6 months in Scotland) in prison.

Section 13 stipulates that Sections 1 to 9 expire after 12 months, but allows them to be renewed for a year at a time by Parliament.

Section 14 requires the Home Secretary to make 3 monthly reports on the use of control orders, to appoint someone to review the legislation, for that person to review the legislation after 9 months and then every 12 months thereafter (if the legislation is renewed).

Recent commentary on the House Arrest proposals

The Adam Smith Institute Blog says:

Sure, a liberal order must protect itself from those who would destroy liberalism itself. And maybe, at times, you have to act illiberally to do that. But you should still act according to the rule of law. If there is evidence, it should be produced in court. If the evidence is too sensitive to be made public, then it should be heard in private before qualified judges. At the moment we are jailing people, and soon we will be imprisoning them in their homes, on the say-so of a politician. That is scary.

I quite agree.

Tim Worstall, whose blog I recently added to my side bar, writes in an article entitled "Stalinism Returns":

The cornerstone of whatever freedoms we have managed to accumulate over the past millenium or so is the right to a trial by jury, with the associated presumption of innocence and Habeus Corpus. Everything else, and I do mean everything, that we enjoy, prosperity, freedoms of speech, association, property, are all reliant on this one base, and now they want to take that away from us.

This is an important point. The right to defend oneself against an accusation does form the basis upon which individual freedom lies. Without it, your freedom can be snuffed out at the whim of a politician.

Over at the Samizdata blog, they had this to say:

The Daily Telegraph appears to blame the Human Rights Act, noting that this decision is ostensibly being taken because the Law Lords said that it was illegal to empower the Home Secretary only to detain foreigners arbitrarily. This view is advanced notwithstanding Lord Hoffman's ditcta that applying such a equally rule to British citizens is no more defensible. But it is an absurd idea that such unlimited arbitrary power of arrest and detention is something the government reluctantly finds has been thrust upon it.

I agree that the claim the Human Rights Act is to blame is flawed -- the new measures are just as much a breach of human rights as the old -- and that the image of a government reluctantly forced to consider these measures is absurd. The government has been attacking civil liberties, in all sorts of legislation -- not just anti-terrorism legislation -- for years, and started this well before 9/11. They haven't tried obvious measures that might allow more prosecutions of suspected terrorists such as using intercept evidence in court (as almost every other developed country, including Israel with its long experience of terrorism does). It seems to me that, far too often, an attack on civil liberties is this government's first resort when faced with a problem. This is a government addicted to executive power.

The excellent spy.org.uk blog comments:

The plan seems to be to allow a "whole range" of measures under a regime of Control Orders which could include house arrest, electronic tagging, denial of telephony or internet access, denial of association with some as yet unspecified people etc., all without actully having to present any evidence to a court. The whole point of having to go through a legal court procedure is precisely so that politicians and faceless petty officials cannot impose ever changing Kafakaesque rules and regulations which cannot be challenged by the defendant.

The 60th Anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp brings to mind the quotation from Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was locked up in the Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps:

"First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me."

How can this Labour Government introduce such a fundamental attack on the the principle of Habeas Corpus ? The end does not justify the means.

Finally some further comments of my own. There has been a steady, systematic attack on civil liberties going on in Britain now for many years, which started well before 9/11 and which has involved attacks across many areas of policy, not just crime or anti-terrorist policy. These proposals are the latest and most extreme yet.

It seems to me that each time a proposal to weaken civil liberties makes it into law without the government facing punishment from the electorate and without there being any other effective opposition or backlash, it provides encouragement for further attacks. Each new attack that passes by without an outcry/backlash from the population proves that the government can probably go yet further still and get away with it.

There is also another aspect of this that worries me. Each time civil liberties are successfully weakened and each time the executive acquires an arbitrary/draconian power over individuals, those who might abuse such powers are encouraged to press for more and given more opportunities to take power themselves.

It does not matter that the intent of the politicians may be benign, the above points will hold. This process is making Britain vulnerable to tyranny.

And here is my final point: If the government gets away with enacting these proposals without a serious backlash, it will demonstrate that even more draconian measures could be enacted before a backlash occurs.

Given how draconian these proposals are, that scares the hell out of me.

And remember there's already an enabling act ticking away on Britain's statute books!

Implications of the proposed Control Orders

The govt's proposed control orders have some very worrying implications. Not only will these orders...

• be imposed on the basis of secret evidence that may be withheld from the suspect themselves,
• be applicable to British citizens and foreign nationals alike,
• be imposed by the Home Secretary rather than by the courts, and
• involve sanctions including indefinite house arrest,
  

...but they may be imposed on people who are not even accused of any wrongdoing:

Family and friends of terrorist suspects held under house arrest could be subject to tough sanctions even though they have not been accused of a crime, it was disclosed yesterday.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said people living with those subject to executive control orders could be banned from using the telephone or internet and searched every time they came home.

Thus if you live with someone the Home Secretary claims is involved in terrorism (but he also claims cannot be prosecuted and the evidence cannot be divulged) you could find yourself being frisked (strip searched?) every time you enter or leave your home, banned from using the internet and phone or even banned from communicating with certain people.

But the potential implications do not stop there. What constitutes sufficient "suspicion" in the mind of the Home Secretary will be key here. He will be advised by the security services. Their intelligence is not fallible, will likely be kept secret and therefore untested in court, and may have been cherry picked by over zealous officials.

If a person is suspected due to having regular contact with a (suspected) terrorist group, does that mean everyone who has regular contact with that person is also suspected? Will they then get subjected to banning orders? And their families? And their friends? How far down the chain will a particular Home Secretary or his advisers go?

What if (some people within) the security services "cherry pick" evidence to get a person they simply don't like silenced this way?

What if the security services are fed disinformation by others to get a person they don't like silenced this way?

Such questions highlight why the evidence should be tested in court.

Then there are further aspects of house arrest (which don't apply to detention in a prison). For example, Alice Thomson writing in the Telegraph points out:

Mr Clarke makes house arrest sound a nice, cosy alternative to locking up a suspected terrorist without trial in prison. All it means is that the suspect's wife won't be able to natter on the phone.

But it's not like that. His Cabinet colleague Peter Hain could tell him. House arrest was used extensively in South Africa when he was fighting apartheid. It meant the incarceration of entire families, who then became the focal point of discontent among communities.

The anti-apartheid activist Hilda Bernstein paints an appalling picture of her family's house arrest in her book The World That Was Ours. She makes it clear that prison would have been better than the suffering her children had to undergo.

Or take Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese Communist Party Secretary, who died this month in China after being under house arrest since the 1989 democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. "He is free at last," said his daughter, who called his incarceration a death sentence.

Saddam Hussein used house arrest to great effect, as does North Korea. And then, of course, there is Burma, where the Nobel prize winner and pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been locked up by the junta for nine of the past 15 years, turning her into a martyr in the process.

House arrest takes away all dignity. It can destroy the lives of individuals who have not been proved to have committed any offence, and can allow grievances to fester. As the Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews said this week, what is the difference between Belmarsh and a bungalow? (Emphasis added)

Suppose you and/or your children live with someone subjected to house arrest, and you all have to be frisked, are barred from using the phone, etc. It is quite possible that your kids will get taunted or bullied at school, that some in your community may regard you with suspicion (no smoke without fire) and persecute you and your kids too. How serious this gets depends on how suspicious/fearful or ignorant those in your community are.

This legislation, by giving the executive the power to lock up anyone it chooses on trumped up charges, has the potential to make the government a more serious threat to the lives of British citizens than the terrorists it's ostensibly aimed at.

I do not say this lightly.

It is precisely when the state acquires such arbitrary power over its citizens that the state becomes dangerous. History has illustrated this time and time again, in Russia, Germany, Eastern Europe, Iraq, Iran, China, North Korea, and indeed the world over (yes I include this country).

We recently commemorated the closing down of the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz at the end of WWII, but it appears we have still to learn the lessons of that dark episode in history.

It might not be this government that abuses this power, but can we trust the next one? Or the one after that?

Those who think our government would never do such things, should ponder how a cultured, developed European country in the 19th century, evolved into the barbaric state of Nazi Germany in the middle decades of the 20th century and should ponder the fact that Hitler was elected to power in (what was at the time) a democracy.