PJC Journal – Original

Amongst the
plethora of draconian laws that have been passed by this government, is one
that has led to a basic freedom to be revoked. 
Our right to protest to Parliament. 

Enforced by the
political police force set up by the Home Office, the SOCA using the Serious
and Organised Crimes Act, arrest any protestors who do not have prior police
permission to protest outside the Houses of Parliament.

A ray of hope to
right that wrong looks to be in trouble as the government plan to extend its
use of the law.

 

During the Second
Reading of Baroness (Sue) Miller’s Public Demonstrations (Repeals) Bill, the
minister announced that instead of supporting her Bill, the Government would
instead soon be announcing other locations where they intend to curtail the
right to protest.

Commenting
Baroness Miller said: 

“The Government
talked about Britishness yesterday, but today showed a blatant lack of concern
about their mutilation of one of the most cherished British traditions: freedom
of expression.

“In fact the
Government appears determined to extend its draconian policies into other parts
of the country.”  

 source

One suggestion is that it may be extended to prevent Brian Haws from camping outside Blair's house when he quits Downing St.

 How long before our right to protest is lost forever!

The issue of the Database state is so
important, and so perilous to our wellbeing as individuals and as a nation,
that I have republished this article from the NO2ID campaign, a link is
available at the bottom of this article, for those who perhaps read my blog but
not theirs.  I fully support the NO2ID
campaign, as their aims and ambitions reflect my own.

 

If any of you consider that the content of
my blog is paranoia, then read everything below, it is real, it is government
policy, and they are enacting it under your nose right now.  The one item not covered in this article is
the benign NPfIT. As every member of the public will be signed up to the NHS,
by default this will become a super database as well, so we fully recommend
that you write to your doctor and opt-out of an entry into the electronic
records system.  Do you want your piles
being discussed by a civil servant in the DVLA, and that information being sold
on to marketing companies?  That’s what
sharing your data means.

 

 

The government does not want to “share” my data – it wants full control. How can I give informed
consent to having my data 'passed on' if I don't know how it will be used in
the future, or who will have access to it? These [data-sharing] proposals show
government claims for 'ID cards', centralised medical records and a Children's
Index are not only complete fantasy – but currently ILLEGAL. No government that
passes (or ignores) laws to serve its own “efficiency” over the
personal security and privacy of citizens, can claim to represent the public
interest. – Phil 'NO2ID' Booth, London

As my comment on the BBC's 'Have Your Say' (Added: Monday, 15 January, 2007,
15:11 GMT) has mysteriously failed to appear, I decided to kick off this update
by posting a slight edit of it here – expanding the abbreviations I used to
meet the 500 character limit.

–

If you would like to engage in open discussion about this (and many other
issues) I recommend a visit to NO2ID's forums. Elements of this update are
drawn from a post I made in our 'Data Sharing' forum, here:

http://forum.no2id.net/viewtopic.php?t=14832

–

Many people who haven't been tracking the ID issue as closely as NO2ID will not
be aware of the key documents and initiatives that have led up to, or are a
part of, Tony Blair's latest data-sharing 'revelations'. The BBC was
unfortunately a bit wrong-footed on Sunday, reporting a new 'superdatabase' -
as it, and others, were similarly misdirected over the Home Office's supposed
U-turn on the National Identity Register (or 'NIR', the database behind ID
cards) before Christmas.

The Home Office has NEVER said that there won't be an NIR. They have just
changed from building a complete new system to trying to build a rather more
complex system by linking several existing databases. Before Christmas,
ministers insisted that the information on these databases would be
'segregated' and protected by security measures and the normal confidentiality
rules. This new data-sharing scheme appears to overthrow that promise.

What follows is unashamedly a reading list. And I warn you – it's not easy
reading, either.

There's a lot to plough through, but I do urge those of you who want to
understand just how concerted and deliberate an attack on civil liberty, personal
security and privacy the government's ID and data-sharing proposals really are,
to *make* the time. The government is relying on you not to.

The most important documents and initiatives, in roughly chronological order,
are:

1) The Citizen Information Project [Treasury] – an Office for National
Statistics (ONS) project, quietly 'wrapped into' the National ID Scheme just
after the passing of the Identity Cards Act 2006. All the available
documentation on CIP is published here:http://www.gro.gov.uk/cip/

If you want to start somewhere, I strongly recommend the Final Report – you
could get lost in the rest, which may have been the point of publishing it all
- available as a 405KB PDF:

http://www.gro.gov.uk/cip/Download.asp?CIP%20final%20report_tcm95-26296.pdf

2) 'Transformational Government' [Cabinet Office] – the key strategy document,
subtitled 'Enabled by technology' with the the cringe-worthy strapline:
'Citizen and business-centred shared services, professionally delivered'.
Places the National Identity Register (or 'NIR' – see below) right at the
centre of things. Available as a 412KB PDF file:

http://www.cio.gov.uk/documents/pdf/transgov/transgov-strategy.pdf

John Suffolk – the Government's new 'Chief Information Officer' – publishes an
Annual Report on 'Transformational Government', the first of which you can
comment on here:http://www.commentonthis.com/tfg/

3) The Identity Cards Act 2006 [Home Office] – bullied onto the statute books
in March 2006, this is the piece of legislation that prompted the setting up of
NO2ID as a public campaign. The 'National Identity Register' – whether one
database, as originally promised, or three or many more – sits at the heart of
the government's 'identity management' ambitions. And its tentacles will reach
into every aspect of YOUR life, if we don't stop it and get the Act repealed.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060015_en.pdf-
217KB PDF
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/en2006/ukpgaen_20060015_en.pdf-
a further 187KB of Explanatory Notes

4) 'Information Sharing Vision Statement' [DCA] – buried in September 2006,
just after the anniversary of 9/11 and when Tony Blair's troubles at the TUC
were bound to grab the headlines. As NO2ID said at the time, “The
announcement of the abolition of privacy ought to be big news” – it
wasn't. We even went so far as to accuse the Information Commissioner of
“throwing in the towel”. People may draw their own conclusions from
the deafening silence from the ICO on these latest announcements…

http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/sharing/information-sharing.pdf-
399KB PDF

5) The Varney Review [Treasury] – Full title, 'Service transformation: A better
service for citizens and businesses, a better deal for the taxpayer', fronted
by Sir David Varney and published in December 2006. Available as a 752KB PDF
file:

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/53D/F2/pbr06_varney_review.pdf

You can also read it online and comment on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis at
Sam Smith's excellenthttp://www.commentonthis.com/varney/

6) 'Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme – Safeguarding your
identity' [Home Office] – note the none-too-subtle shift from 'ID cards'.
Buried literally hours before Parliament rose for Christmas on 19th December 2006. Available as an 858KB PDF file:

http://www.identitycards.gov.uk/downloads/Strategic_Action_Plan.pdf

Commentable copy here:http://www.commentonthis.com/idaction/You
may note that the word “trust” does not appear once in the entire
document. A pretty fundamental concept for identity in any shape or form,
entirely absent from the government's plans…

–

These are the the reports published to date. But there are yet more in the
pipeline:

7) 'The Straw Committee' – we hadn't even heard that this was going on, until
Stephen Harrison (chief civil servant at UK IPS) let it slip at a meeting of
the British Computer Society. Intended to find “quick wins for identity
management” so that the government can claim that state ID control is good
for us, and that it is actually doing something, anything, about it – despite
having failed to put any of the ID scheme out to tender almost a year after
forcing through the legislation.

'The Hutton Report' – mysteriously absent, despite having been dragged in to
justify the latest data-sharing announcements. Another review, this time of
'customer care standards across public services', that forms part of the Prime
Minister's 11th hour sweeping policy review, a last-ditch attempt to tie his
successor to his view of the New Labour project. Unfortunately, Gordon Brown
and others do seem to be buying it…

[Clearly, given the government's outstanding record on IT delivery, the best
way to improve the quality and efficiency of public services is to join all
their databases together to permit data-sharing on an unprecedented scale and
give bureaucrats even more control over every aspect of our lives... NOT!]

9) The 'Public Private Forum on Identity Management' – the former CEO of HBOS,
Sir James Crosby, chairs Gordon Brown's 'ID taskforce' that is expected to
release a report in March 2007 on “how the public and private sectors can
work together… to maximise efficiency and effectiveness”. It seems that
there are quite a few of these reports floating about – might it not be more
'efficient and effective' to have a proper debate, rather than to let the
various departments, potential successors and candidates for the post-Blair top
slots squabble amongst themselves?

Of course not, because we have…

10) 'Citizen panels' / 'Citizen forums' – Tony Blair now tells us that:

“Ordinary people [hand-picked by government-retained PR merchants, of
course] will have the chance to directly influence government decisions [i.e.
be used in a profoundly undemocratic way to rubber-stamp government policy] as
part of a major policy review starting this month.

“Members of the public will be consulted in a “deliberative
forum” that will put them in the shoes of decision makers in government
[overlooking for a moment the fact that these people won't be elected
representatives, why are we supposed to be so impressed by this?]. Cabinet
Office Ministers Pat McFadden and Ed Miliband will support them throughout the
process ['support'? More like 'manage any troublemakers that slip through the
selection process'].

“The February meetings will see 100 delegates study official papers
currently under discussion, and then consider the same dilemmas [i.e.
"We'll fix the questions, or at least tell you what they are." Surely
these 'ordinary people' can make up their own minds what questions to ask? They
might even help the government think through the issues from an 'ordinary
person's' perspective...] which Ministers face on a daily basis before making
their final decisions.”

The citizens' panels are expected to start reporting in March – hmm, I wonder
if this could be timed to steal any of Crosby's thunder? – having had just one month to deliberate on what, quite
clearly, has taken ministers and civil servants years to cook up.

–

There you go. It's all there in black-and-white. Maybe buried under layers of
spin, but you can read the planned architecture (even see some of the diagrams)
of the database state for yourself.

This is not fantasy.

This is not paranoia.

This is government policy – and it will affect YOU (and your kids and your
grandchildren, and their children…)

If you want to do something about it, then I urge you to join NO2ID:

http://www.no2id.net/

We and tens of thousands of our supporters are fighting this as, almost every
week now, the government ramps things up yet another notch. It may think it can
boil the entire population like frogs, leaking overly-dramatic announcements
and then sneaking out another piece of the jigsaw puzzle as the fuss dies down.
Don't be fooled. Inform yourself, and tell others.

Together we can stop this – say NO2ID and the database state.

We have a long
history in the United Kingdom of both brutal feudal regimes and of
writing laws to protect the citizens, or subjects as they used to be called. 

It may be
remembered that it was rebel Lords who forced King John into signing the Magna
Carta which has been the base for many of our freedoms, the Bill of Rights guaranteed
us fundamental rights, and the Act of Union with Scotland primarily devised to
stop the bickering between the two nations enhanced those rights, with many
generations of Britons having fought and died to protect them.

It has for
centuries been the moral base that our laws, which distinguish the difference
between right and wrong in our society, the sense of fairness in
applying those laws and the rights of the individual have been paramount.
Hundreds of years of case law to hone and define those laws. 

In 6 short years
all that has been destroyed.

In 6 years over
80 Acts of Parliament have been passed which have stripped the citizens of Britain of the
fundamental right of innocence before proven guilt, stripped of the right of an
accused to be presented with the evidence, stripped of the right not to be
detained without charge, stripped of the right of a trial before a jury of our peers,
stripped of the right to silence, stripped of our right to freedom of movement
without let or hindrance, and in many cases stripped of our right of free
choice. 

How has this
happened.?  Is it the work of one man?

If it was the
work of one man, it would have been stopped in its tracks by the checks and
balances that we had in parliament before the reforms of the way in which both
Houses of Parliament now work, before the reform of the make-up of the House of
Lords. 

No, it is the
work of many, a movement of men and women who together have conspired to
defraud the people of this land of their rights, and centre power in a few in Westminster, and perhaps beyond. 

How big this
conspiracy is, how far it extends, how far reaching are the conspirators, and
how many hangers on are involved, trying to back the winning side is unknown.  

The one thing
that is certain is that we could not have come so far down the road of authoritarianism
without such a conspiracy, perhaps through coercion and the complicity of many.
 

The silence of
the Opposition Parties to these changes are at the very least suspect, and as a minimum would
involve them in the complicity.  Indeed
it was an opposition whip who introduced a bill to allow government to work in
secret.

 

We are finding
that government now works with the arrogance of an elite party machine with little
regard to the wishes of Parliament, or indeed of Parliament itself.

Failing or
placing late documents before the Houses for scrutiny, passing new laws to
guarantee government working in secrecy.

Failing to
publish key reports such as the Interception of Communications Commissioner and
the Intelligence Services Commissioner reports for 2005, (which could possibly
prove this conspiracy). Failing to renew the DPA registrations of key services
such as the Police, which makes the PNC and DNA illegal databases.

A Home Office
that does not know how many people have been re-arrested under terrorism laws,
how many people are in prison, where they are or how many have absconded.

A government that
has given itself the powers to introduce or change secondary legislation (in
effect to rule without parliament).

A government that
has forced the BBC
to become a mouthpiece for policy, that dare not run critical stories, a
defacto state broadcaster.
 

A government that
appears to be hell bent on three things to the exclusion of all else. 

Criminalising
everything we do.

Collecting as
much information and data about us as possible.

Raw propaganda
campaigns on government policies, to terrify the public into compliance.
 

The correlation
between where we stand in this country right now, and Germany in 1937 as Hitler
began to tighten and consolidate his grip on that nation is undeniable,
frighteningly similar to the point of using virtually identical laws, and as in
Germany to teach Nationalism in our schools, to corrupt our children.

Sir Ken Macdonald
QC, Director of Public Prosecutions has confirmed our journey into a
totalitarian void and briefed the Criminal Bar Association on 23rd January 2007,
in a speech which you can read in full here, warned
of the dangers, warned that the failure of the judiciary to uphold our rights
and freedoms will be a catastrophe for this nation. 

We as citizens
have to hope that the Police and Judiciary are not part of this conspiracy, because
it is they alone that can identify, apprehend and bring to book those who wish
to see the population of this country managed and controlled by an
authoritarian state.

Removing our existing politicians is only one part of the solution, as it is rarely the case
that the instigators and builders of such authoritarian societies survive to
rule, for once having done their work they are of no further use, but it is the
mighty and powerful, the evil in the shadows that will eventually rule our
lives, unless we can uncover and expose this conspiracy, and take positive
steps to reverse this inexorable step towards totalitarian darkness for
Britain.

 

 

We have a long
history in the United Kingdom of both brutal feudal regimes and of
writing laws to protect the citizens, or subjects as they used to be called. 

It may be
remembered that it was rebel Lords who forced King John into signing the Magna
Carta which has been the base for many of our freedoms, the Bill of Rights guaranteed
us fundamental rights, and the Act of Union with Scotland primarily devised to
stop the bickering between the two nations enhanced those rights, with many
generations of Britons having fought and died to protect them.

It has for
centuries been the moral base that our laws, which distinguish the difference
between right and wrong in our society, the sense of fairness in
applying those laws and the rights of the individual have been paramount.
Hundreds of years of case law to hone and define those laws. 

In 6 short years
all that has been destroyed.

In 6 years over
80 Acts of Parliament have been passed which have stripped the citizens of Britain of the
fundamental right of innocence before proven guilt, stripped of the right of an
accused to be presented with the evidence, stripped of the right not to be
detained without charge, stripped of the right of a trial before a jury of our peers,
stripped of the right to silence, stripped of our right to freedom of movement
without let or hindrance, and in many cases stripped of our right of free
choice. 

How has this
happened.?  Is it the work of one man?

If it was the
work of one man, it would have been stopped in its tracks by the checks and
balances that we had in parliament before the reforms of the way in which both
Houses of Parliament now work, before the reform of the make-up of the House of
Lords. 

No, it is the
work of many, a movement of men and women who together have conspired to
defraud the people of this land of their rights, and centre power in a few in Westminster, and perhaps beyond. 

How big this
conspiracy is, how far it extends, how far reaching are the conspirators, and
how many hangers on are involved, trying to back the winning side is unknown.  

The one thing
that is certain is that we could not have come so far down the road of authoritarianism
without such a conspiracy, perhaps through coercion and the complicity of many.
 

The silence of
the Opposition Parties to these changes are at the very least suspect, and as a minimum would
involve them in the complicity.  Indeed
it was an opposition whip who introduced a bill to allow government to work in
secret.

 

We are finding
that government now works with the arrogance of an elite party machine with little
regard to the wishes of Parliament, or indeed of Parliament itself.

Failing or
placing late documents before the Houses for scrutiny, passing new laws to
guarantee government working in secrecy.

Failing to
publish key reports such as the Interception of Communications Commissioner and
the Intelligence Services Commissioner reports for 2005, (which could possibly
prove this conspiracy). Failing to renew the DPA registrations of key services
such as the Police, which makes the PNC and DNA illegal databases.

A Home Office
that does not know how many people have been re-arrested under terrorism laws,
how many people are in prison, where they are or how many have absconded.

A government that
has given itself the powers to introduce or change secondary legislation (in
effect to rule without parliament).

A government that
has forced the BBC
to become a mouthpiece for policy, that dare not run critical stories, a
defacto state broadcaster.
 

A government that
appears to be hell bent on three things to the exclusion of all else. 

Criminalising
everything we do.

Collecting as
much information and data about us as possible.

Raw propaganda
campaigns on government policies, to terrify the public into compliance.
 

The correlation
between where we stand in this country right now, and Germany in 1937 as Hitler
began to tighten and consolidate his grip on that nation is undeniable,
frighteningly similar to the point of using virtually identical laws, and as in
Germany to teach Nationalism in our schools, to corrupt our children.

Sir Ken Macdonald
QC, Director of Public Prosecutions has confirmed our journey into a
totalitarian void and briefed the Criminal Bar Association on 23rd January 2007,
in a speech which you can read in full here, warned
of the dangers, warned that the failure of the judiciary to uphold our rights
and freedoms will be a catastrophe for this nation. 

We as citizens
have to hope that the Police and Judiciary are not part of this conspiracy, because
it is they alone that can identify, apprehend and bring to book those who wish
to see the population of this country managed and controlled by an
authoritarian state.

Removing our existing politicians is only one part of the solution, as it is rarely the case
that the instigators and builders of such authoritarian societies survive to
rule, for once having done their work they are of no further use, but it is the
mighty and powerful, the evil in the shadows that will eventually rule our
lives, unless we can uncover and expose this conspiracy, and take positive
steps to reverse this inexorable step towards totalitarian darkness for
Britain.