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“For five years I have avoided using the phrase ‘police state’. But the sort of things going on here is what you expect in a police state, a banana state. This is the most extraordinary event of my parliamentary career.” (David Davis)

I find the items on this list extremely disturbing, particularly those which relate to his offices, phone and computer.

The six facts causing Tories alarm about Damian Green

“The arrest of Damian Green for doing his job of opposing the executive is a step too far in rolling back centuries of democratic achievement. The pretext is the excessive desire of this government to keep all public information secret, and prevent the taxpayer from finding out what has been done in their name and at their expense. This is the most secretive, as well as the most authoritarian, government of the modern era.”

In case you’re wondering, the author is not exactly a natural political ally of the Conservatives:

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/11/the_jackboots_a.html

(Link seen on Glyn Moody’s blog)

Updates:
Cross-party fury over MP’s arrest
Damien Green arrest ‘like Mugabe’s Zimbabwe’
Damian Green arrest: PM accused of contempt for parliament
The six facts causing Tories alarm about Damian Green

Fantastic. UK taxpayers are paying to be spied upon. Technology will make slaves of us yet; this is not how it was intended to be.

UK.gov dishes out £19m for comms snoop data silos

theregister.co.uk has provided details of BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse’s plans to hand supposedly “anonymized” customer web usage data over to Phorm, a third party advertising broker.

If you use one of these providers, you really need to have a read of this article. It’s generating a large number of concerned comments as I write this.

What’s more, it’s looking increasingly likely that BT (at least) has already handed over data to Phorm without consulting its customers!

As I asked rhetorically in a comment left (currently in moderation) on the above page, what’s the difference between handing over “anonymized” HTTP data and handing over “anonymized” voice data? If the former comes to pass, how long before the latter?

EDIT: The more I read about this, the worse it gets:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/25/phorm_isp_advertising/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_broadband_isp_targets/

EDIT 2:
Looks like my post title wasn’t as original as I thought:
http://www.badphorm.co.uk/

EDIT 3:
A recent comment titled “Internal BT worries” left by an anonymous source on the theregister.co.uk may shed some light on BT’s current internal position on this:

I wouldn’t normally do the Anonymous Coward thing but …..

Looking around on the BT Intranet this article has come up a few times and there is definitely some internal worry about the publicity elements. BT Security have also (but not formally) hinted at concerns about the offshoring of this data.

The standard internal answer is currently:

“People have wildly different feelings about this

Actually, if used properly it can be a huge advantage for the customer

Others like you feel different

We will monitor this carefully and see what the experience in practice will be and evluate seriously”

It’s down as a priority delivery for Q4 2008.

For the Wholesale query above this is definitely a BT Retail initiative.

Oops! Our bad. When we wrote that stuff in our Universal Declaration of Human Rights about ‘Freedom of Expression’, we omitted a qualifying clause along the lines of ‘provided the content of your expression doesn’t offend anyone, particularly those whose ethical frameworks derive their ultimate authority from superstitious belief’.

You see, a theist’s right to be protected from the offensive opinions and actions of non-theists, outweighs the right of non-theists to be protected from the offensive opinions and actions of theists. Quite why this should be so no one is really sure, but regardless, someone should add this inviolable rule to the Declaration for it’s so often invoked that it could really do with some codification.

This is yet another poignant illustration of why the Declaration document should be a user-editable wiki rather than an inflexible, static HTML page. The latter is so Ethics 1.0.

Let’s see now, the RIAA is on to something here. Just think of how many other organizations could benefit from filters on consumers’ private property. A quick, off-the-top-of-my-head list as I drink my morning coffee includes:

• Software-license checking filters: various helpful companies have already provided us with these of course, but a more joined up approach wouldn’t hurt. It would ensure that all the requisite permits are up to date and valid before you attempt to use your computer or connect to the Internet. It would be most unfortunate if a SWAT team were to kick down your front door on account of something silly, like being a day late with the annual subscription payment for your thumbnail viewer, or something.
• Movie filters. When the Hollywood studios and copyright holders see RIAA getting filters installed on users’ machines, you know that they will be demanding the same. And their filters will probably be bigger and better.
• Email filters: not the ones the user creates, but ones put in place by law enforcement agencies, just to be able to “educate” you should those agencies determine that you are engaging in activities or conversations that are liable to lead to any kind of nefarious activity. It’s pretty clear that we already have these out on the network, but getting across that last mile and into the home should increase accuracy and conviction rates educational effectiveness.
• Patent filters: all software activity on users’ machines to be analyzed for potential patent violation. (The fun they’ll have with that one.) Oddly enough, Microsoft is reported to be less than keen on this particular measure.
• Voting filters: helpful state analysis of your online voting behaviour, just to help you correctly discharged your democratic duty, you understand.
• Online banking filters: the Inland Revenue would hate for you to inadvertently be using any services that might be, shall we say, unhelpful to its cause.
• Adblocking filters: just in case you were tempted to install every brimstone beast’s favourite application. Oh, and also to make sure you haven’t accidentally un-installed the mandatory eyeball monitoring app, you know, the one that uses your web-cam to ensure that you are not breaking the terms of the websites you visit by not actually looking at the ads.
• Multi-user monitoring filter: this uses your other web cam to check that no more than two users are viewing a website on any given machine simultaneously. If a user wishes for more than two users to browse the web from his or her machine, the filter will advise that a multi-user licence is required.

If you can think of any more potentially useful filters I’ve missed. Feel free to add them below.