ralpress.org

Seen on Glyn Moody’s Twitter feed:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0902/S00360.htm

Tony Benn talks in today’s Guardian about why he supports that publication’s new website, Liberty Central and its support for the Convention on Modern Liberty (an event Melissa and I will be attending):

“Of course we need good government. Of course we need it to have policies that deliver greater social justice and equality. But the more influential government becomes the more it is essential that it respects our liberties. Its obligation must be to serve the people, not rule over them. We have to insist on this principle. It is not a matter of left or right, Tory or Labour.

In fact it is essential to defend liberty to the hilt especially if, like me, you want a government that can protect the weak and vulnerable. The more government has influence over economic and social policy, the more democratic, open, accountable and respectful of our liberties it needs to be. Otherwise, if it is not based on the wishes of a free people, the rich and powerful corporations will take advantage of any lack of democracy”.

Liberty is Crucial to Democracy

UPDATE: Sadly, it sound like these guys didn’t get the memo.

We salute you Craig. Despite the fact that the British state would have denied you your most fundamental human right, that of being in control of your own life, you managed to preserve that right to the end.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7774652.stm

The documentary examining your illness and death airs this evening on a British TV channel, and the media here is full of predictable objections from authoritarian and reactionary forces that want to take that right away from people in your situation, forcing them to spend their final months, years or decades in a living nightmare of terrifying helplessness and dependency. You were destined to suffer a fate that many consider to be one of the most horrific of all, namely, becoming a “brain in a vat”, utterly helpless and eventually destined to lose even the means to communicate your most basic needs to the world around you (and even that would have required that the world around you remained compassionate and attentive to your needs, things you would have been powerless to ensure). It truly is the stuff of nightmares, but the British state was going to prevent you from taking the required steps to avoid it.

Craig was faced with an utterly horrendous ordeal that could have lasted decades. To those who would have preferred to have seen him forced to endure such a horrific, drawn-out fate in order that their inherited superstitious beliefs be appeased, I say shame on you. It’s unconscionable to allow such hangovers from the primordial mental swamp to override the very real desires and needs of a man in such a desperate personal situation.

To those who object on utilitarian grounds, believing that a liberal approach to euthanasia creates the  potential for too much abuse, I’m less dismissive and I share your concerns to some extent. However, I do not accept that any theoretical concerns override the very real situation that Craig faced. And they certainly don’t override the most fundamental human right of all, that of self-determination.

As for the televising of Craig’s death, well, it was his decision, no one forced him. If you don’t want to watch the program, it’s quite simple, don’t.

“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.