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Archives For November 30, 1999 @ 12:00 am
Batter Together – A Political Cartoon
September 24, 2014 @ 12:52 pm
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aquarelle, Art, Batter Together, Battered Kingdom, Battered Together, Better Together, Cartoon, Current Affairs, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Editorial Cartoon, English Politics, Frying, Houses of Parliament, Mars Bar, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Orange, Painting, Parliament, Political Cartoon, Politics, Scottish Politics, Scottish Referendum, UK, UK Government, UK Politics, Union, Union Jack, United Kingdom, watercolor, watercolour, Watercolour painting, Westminster
Scotland’s Referendum and Why ‘English Votes for English Laws’ is Unpalatable
September 20, 2014 @ 7:08 am
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Scotland voted on Thursday to remain within the United Kingdom – with 55% and 2,001,926 voting ‘No’ to Scottish independence, while 45% and 1,617,989 voted ‘Yes’ – after more than two years of heated debate, but also on the back of a late pledge by the three main Westminster parties to grant Scotland greater devolved powers as part of the UK. The pledge, signed by David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Ed Miliband and published on the front page of the Daily Record at the beginning of the week, promised ‘extensive new powers’ to Scotland.
More devolution for Scotland in the case of a ‘No’ vote was always on the agenda, but the scope of these late-promised powers is a matter of debate between the three parties and between the parties and the SNP. The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood already legislates for Scotland’s health and social services, education, housing, transportation, agriculture, fisheries and forestry, environment, arts and sport, tourism, and economic development. The Scotland Act 2012 – which amended the Scotland Act 1998, which established the devolved Scottish Parliament – additionally gave Scotland’s Parliament the power to raise or lower the rate of income tax by 10p in the pound, uniformly across all tax bands; as well as some other minor powers relating to taxation and law and order. However the Act is not due to be fully realised before 2016, and is now likely to be superseded. At the moment the Scottish Parliament can alter the rate of income tax by 3p in the pound.
Maximum devolution for Scotland – ‘devo max’ – would imply allowing the Scottish Parliament to legislate on everything except foreign policy and defence. It is clear that any move to extend Scotland’s powers will fall some way short of this. So far, discussion around the pledge for extensive new powers for Scotland has centred upon three issues. The first is greater still Scottish authority over taxation. The SNP would like complete control over taxation within Scotland, including absolute control over income tax rates, corporation tax, and air passenger duty. The Conservatives appear ready to give complete control over income tax rates; while the Liberal Democrats would offer this and more. Labour, however, seem willing to allow the Scottish Parliament to increase tax rates as they see fit, but not to unilaterally cut the top rate of income tax.
Secondly, the pledge vowed to consolidate Scotland’s authority over its NHS. This is against a background of gesture from Westminster threatening cuts and further privatisations; but also in a context whereby the NHS in Scotland apparently faces a funding gap of £400 million. Thirdly, and related to the issue of the NHS, is the promise to retain the Barnett formula: a mechanism for allocating public expenditure levels in the United Kingdom’s four nations, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Based on population, the Barnett formula has resulted in Scotland maintaining a significantly higher expenditure per capita than England: as it stands today, Scotland spends £1,623 – 19% – more per head than England on public services.
Embellishing a timetable established several weeks ago by Gordon Brown, David Cameron announced yesterday morning in his post-referendum speech that Lord Smith of Kelvin – a former BBC governor, and chairman of the organising committee for Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games – will oversee the process towards greater devolution for Scotland. The timeline is short: detailed proposals are to be written up by October, and they should pass consultation by November before a draft bill is published in January. Any legislation will not be passed until after the general election in May, and the continued implementation of the Barnett formula is likely to prove a sticking point within the UK Parliament.
The promise of greater devolution for Scotland has brought a surge of attention to the West Lothian question, and the proposal for ‘English votes for English laws’. In short, the question – first raised back in 1977 by the West Lothian MP Tam Dalyell, in the build up to the failed Scottish referendum of 1979 – asks why Scottish MPs can vote on English laws, while English MPs cannot vote on Scottish laws as they have no access to the Scottish Parliament. The proposal suggests that where legislation only concerns England, only MPs from English constituencies should be allowed to vote.
It is easy to go back and forth over ‘English votes for English laws’. Superficially, the proposal sounds eminently reasonable; but when you realise that two of its main proponents over the past weeks and months have been Conservative MP John Redwood and UKIP leader Nigel Farage, suspicions grow in the mind as the body is immediately beset by revulsion. On the other hand on Thursday night, as the referendum results filtered through via the BBC, Ming Campbell – former Liberal Democrat leader and current MP for North East Fife – agreed that, with more powers promised to the Scottish Parliament, an end to the ability for Scottish MPs to vote on English laws is not only inevitable, but logical and fair.
In fact, the proposal was part of the Conservative manifesto for 2010; but the coalition government determined to set up a commission to investigate rather than act. The McKay Commission reported in March 2013, broadly supporting procedural change; but averring that ‘Under the Commission’s recommendations, no MPs would be prevented from voting on any bill, and the right of the House as a whole to make final decisions would be preserved’ and ‘Our proposals retain the right of a UK-wide majority to make the final decisions where they believe UK interests or those of a part of the UK other than England should prevail. We expect that governments will prefer compromise to conflict.’
English laws – as opposed to UK laws – would in theory cover the areas of health, education, transportation, and culture. Foreign affairs, defence, energy, and basic welfare provision and pensions are prominent among the realms which would then remain the concern of the UK Parliament. But with greater devolution for Scotland when it comes to taxation, it is unclear to what extent England might be allowed to set its economic policy independently from the rest of the United Kingdom. This is an intractable problem with the concept of ‘English votes for English laws’, because it is arguable that given the population of England and the size of the English economy, the decisions it makes economically will always have a disproportionate impact on its partners north and west of the border.
With Scotland voting to stay part of the UK and the focus turning to the West Lothian question, what also show through upon analysis are both the strengths of the union between Scotland and England, and the divisions within English society. ‘English votes for English laws’ is a populist proposal, and might well appeal to the vast majority of the English population. But it is hard to see how, in practise, it would benefit vast swathes of the country.
In the 2010 general election, Scotland returned 41 Labour MPs to the House of Commons from 59 contested seats. This amounts to 69% of Scotland’s seats won by Labour. In the North East of England, Labour won 25 from 29 seats. In the North West, Labour took 47 seats from a possible 75; and in Yorkshire and the Humber, they won 32 seats from 54. This means that in the north of England, Labour won 66% of seats. Yet in England as a whole, the Conservatives won 298 of 533 seats; giving them an election victory – although not a majority – in the United Kingdom with 307 seats out of 650.
When it comes to politics, the north of England is ideologically and economically closer to Scotland – and to Wales, where in 2010 Labour took 26 out of 40 seats, or 65% – than it is to London and the South East. However it is without its own parliament, and without the benefits brought about in Scotland by the Barnett formula. It suffers from a lack of representation in parliament and from a shortage of investment in jobs and in cultural life. And it seems perverse that one of the consequences of the close referendum in Scotland might be the further diminishing of the north. If ‘English votes for English laws’ becomes implemented – which may not require the passage of any new legislation – then the viewpoint of northern England will be increasingly marginalised as it loses the effective balance provided by Scottish MPs, and sees Labour struggle to attain a majority on English-only issues of legislation.
Other problems are posed by ‘English votes for English laws’. Would this change require a separate parliament building, which would be the preserve of English MPs and English matters of debate – and if so, where would an English Parliament be located? Otherwise an English Parliament could simply sit in the Commons on a rotational basis: sitting two or three days a week, with the UK Parliament sitting the rest of the time. Alternately, the UK Parliament could remain intact, with Scottish MPs even allowed to debate English laws, but voting limited to English politicians.
On Thursday night, the Times political columnist Daniel Finkelstein raised the notion that, more than an English Parliament, such a fundamental change to legislative procedure could require an English executive – a vast and unwieldy undertaking, which would have wide-ranging ramifications for governmental ministers and the civil service. Labour are advertising a constitutional convention to consider the future of political process in the United Kingdom, reluctant to accept ‘English votes for English laws’, especially as David Cameron seems set to bind further Scottish devolution to the enactment of the proposal. Meanwhile on Thursday night, Labour MP Jim Murphy took a pleasantly contrarian perspective and asked, given the breadth of powers enjoyed by the Greater London Authority, whether London’s MPs should also face a limited role when it comes to legislating for the rest of England.
This argument in particular raises the potential solution of greater devolution for England’s regions. The manner and the terms of such would be difficult to agree upon. Would the present tiered system of local councils remain; would a powerful layer of government emerge at regional level, between Westminster and the local councils over England’s nine regions; or would the concept of city-regions, experimented with in Manchester and Leeds, be spread out across the country? The powers handed over would be open to dispute. And where ‘English votes for English laws’ would seemingly benefit the Conservatives, there is the view that greater devolution for the regions would play into the hands of Labour. Any shift in powers could be complemented by a more representative voting system. But to accept that the strength of feeling shown in Scotland extends throughout the UK requires significant devolution to the regions – and the development of a genuine localised politics, a process which appears both viable and necessary in today’s globalised, interconnected world.
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2010 General Election Results, 2010 UK General Election, 2014 Politics, Affairs, Barnett Formula, BBC, BBC Referendum Coverage, British Politics, Conservative Manifesto, Conservative Party, Conservatives, Constituencies, Constitution, Constitutional Convention, Current Affairs, Daily Record, Daniel Finkelstein, David Cameron, Democracy, Devo-Max, Devolution, Economics, Ed Miliband, England, England Regions, English Parliament, English Parliament Building, English Parliament Question, English Votes for English Laws, English Votes for English Laws Unpalatable, European Politics, Gordon Brown, Holyrood, House of Commons, Income Tax, Independence, Jim Murphy, John Redwood, Labour, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Local Government, Lord Smith of Kelvin, Maximum Devolution, McKay Commission, Ming Campbell, New Parliament, News, NHS, NHS Scotland, Nick Clegg, No Campaign, North East, North England, North West, Norther Ireland, Pledge, Politics, Proportional Representation, Public Expenditure, Referendum, Regional Devolution, Regions, Representative Politics, Scotland, Scotland Act 1998, Scotland Act 2012, Scotland Independence Referendum, Scotland Votes No, Scotland's Future, Scottish Devolution, Scottish Independence, Scottish Independence Campaign, Scottish MPs, Scottish National Party, Scottish No, Scottish Parliament, Scottish Referendum, SNP, Tam Dalyell, Taxation, The Vow, Timetable for Devolution, UK, UK Constitution, UK Parliament, UK Politics, UK Public Expenditure, United Kingdom, Voting Systems, Wales, West Lothian Question, Westminster, Yes Campaign, Yorkshire and Humber
Snowden, the Nation State, and Cameron Against Pornography
August 21, 2013 @ 12:38 pm
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Edward Snowden’s revelations concerning the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency began to be published on 6 June, when The Guardian, and the journalist Glenn Greenwald, unveiled details of a secret court order obliging the telecommunications company Verizon to give to the NSA – on an ongoing basis – the metadata of all those telephone calls made by customers using the Verizon network. The NSA, according to The Guardian, has been engaged in storing this metadata indiscriminately and for periods of up to three months. The following day, the newspaper disclosed the existence of the NSA’s Prism programme, which allegedly allows the NSA direct and unfettered access to the servers of major online service providers – including Google, Apple, and Facebook – enabling the agency to view and store individuals’ online transactions, search histories, and the content of posts and emails.
The NSA and the US government have sought to obfuscate, and to argue that what access they do have to the content of communications is legal, requested through the requisite channels and properly overseen. Yet the legal proceedings involved are undertaken by a closed Fisa (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance) court, with parties legally obligated to provide information, but legally restrained from revealing even the existence of court orders; never mind any details concerning courtroom proceedings and the information they have been legally bound to give. The service providers implicated in Prism and in other NSA programmes have therefore made muddled and contradictory statements – many initially denying all knowledge of Prism – but have ultimately remained somewhat muted regarding the nature of, and the extent of their acquiescence to, these relationships with the security agency.
Snowden’s identity was revealed on 9 June in The Washington Post, by Barton Gellman; and across The Guardian the following morning. The Guardian and the Post, Greenwald and Gellman – the two men with whom Snowden met, in April and in May, after communicating with the documentary film director Laura Poitras; and to whom Snowden passed on the classified NSA documents – have published additional details and further disclosures over the course of the following two months. Several weeks ago, on 31 July, The Guardian exposed the NSA’s XKeyscore programme. XKeyscore allows the NSA’s analysts to search, without warrant, their vast databases of stored information containing everything from internet users’ email contacts and messages, to their log-in data, browser history, and social media activities. It is suggested that around 1.7 billion communication records – emails and phone calls – are stored by the NSA each day; while the content of communications takes up so much space that it is only held for three to five days, noteworthy data can be saved for longer through additional databases. More, via XKeyscore, an individual can be targeted for sustained internet surveillance, with the justification for such a measure the simple matter of clicking an option from a drop-down menu.
Meanwhile, after making requests to more than twenty countries for political asylum, on 1 August Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia, for a period of one year. Two weeks ago, the encrypted email service Lavabit – which Snowden is believed to have used while stationed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport – was shut down: a decision made by its founder, Ladar Levison, who has stated that keeping the service running risked making him ‘complicit in crimes against the American public’. The implication is that Levison has been served with a court order, and pressured either into handing Snowden’s data to the government, or into passing on the data of all Lavabit’s users. However, Levison is legally prevented from explicating his decision and the chain of events which led to it.
Under US law – tied up with the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable and unwarranted searches – it is illegal to intercept, search and store the content of the communications of US citizens without an individual warrant. The secrecy of the Fisa court which issues these warrants, and the court’s orders preventing those involved with its proceedings from speaking out, make it largely unknowable to outsiders and difficult to trust. The Fisa Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008, which was renewed last December for a period of five years, has made it easier for the NSA to work beyond the apparent dictates of the law: it authorises the NSA’s mass collection of the data of foreign citizens, but also allows data to be collected that is sent between foreigners and US citizens; and allows NSA analysts to search the content of communications in order to check whether individuals are in fact American or otherwise. In short, the NSA’s programmes and the FAA make it inevitable that a significant volume of US data will be swept up alongside a tremendous volume of foreign information; then allow this data to be used and stored for up to five years. More, the criteria for determining whether a citizen is within the US is far from strict: citizens may be presumed foreign if there is no evidence confirming them as citizens of America.
Still, programmes like XKeyscore were set up to collect data on such a scale, with searches requiring such little justification, that even these loose legal limitations are routinely bypassed. In the midst of public concern and a range of academic and political responses – the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, was one of several in Congress to label Snowden a ‘traitor’; while the 39th US President Jimmy Carter called the revelations beneficial and lamented ‘America has no functioning democracy’ – the US government and President Obama have denounced Snowden and sought his return to America to face trial. Obama’s second term risks being overwhelmed by the fallout; despite the positives of his presidency, for instance in the realm of healthcare, and disregarding hesitations and obstructions over Guantanamo Bay, his presidency is falling into disgrace owing to his strident actions against press freedom and whistleblowing, which are essential facets of any democracy.
One may view the type of surveillance carried out by the NSA as necessary – validated by a war on terrorism which is nebulous because it is new, and requires new technologies and flexible laws both pushed towards their perceived limits. If the argument that the government would not abuse such stores of data seems naive, and if the sentiment that only those with something to hide have cause to worry seems not only trite, but lacking in intellect, decency and any sound sense of privacy, still there are more considered opinions which would ease if not dismiss concerns: for instance, the stance that privacy on the internet can be so little guaranteed that it cannot be expected; that data collection is par for the course when it comes to email servers, social media and multimedia sites, which rely on targeted advertisements for the vast majority of their income; and that with so much information so readily available and unsecured it is inevitable that governments will take a share. Nevertheless, Edward Snowden’s revelations have exposed programmes the extent of which few even inside politics understood; which do raise essential questions concerning the privacy of individuals, the violations of technology, and the relationship between major companies and the state; and which bring into focus potential abuses of the law as it stands, the arguably undemocratic use of court systems, the deceptions of those in government, and a lack of oversight within the NSA, from politicians, and also by the press.
Last week, Obama announced a series of reforms which, he hoped, will give the public the same confidence in the NSA that he professes to possess. These reforms – including a proposed change to Section 215 of the Patriot Act – focus on the NSA’s collection of phone data rather than internet data, and aim to give the impression of greater accountability. A ‘civil liberties and privacy officer’ will be appointed by the government; a lawyer will be appointed to argue against the government at the Fisa court; and a group of external experts will review the government’s intelligence and communication technologies. Given that the NSA’s methods and the Fisa court system are so convoluted, so secretive, and so determined to persist, it is difficult to see these reforms as anything more than superficial. The Fisa court will remain secretive, and the NSA’s programmes will continue to exist with the same scope and remit and with the same capabilities and legal allowances as before.
A series of documents unveiled by The Washington Post on Friday show just how often the NSA has broken American privacy laws since 2008. In fact, since the FAA was implemented, privacy violations have increased year upon year. A leaked annual audit from May 2012 lists 2,776 violations, which the NSA and governmental figures describe as ‘compliance issues’: the argument is that the majority of these transgressions were not deliberate, but this does not mean that the data collected – which includes both metadata and content – is not searched and kept. Further documents reveal that the guidelines given to NSA analysts advise them to fill in oversight forms with as little ‘extraneous information’ and as generically as possible.
Alongside issues of privacy, legality, government authority and oversight, Snowden’s revelations also call into question if not the existence, then certainly the nature of the nation state. Within the United States, it seems that concern has centred upon upon the illegal collection of American data, the potential misuses of this data, and the NSA and the government’s deceit. Less heed has been given to the flagrant immorality of an American security agency spying indiscriminately, on a gross scale, and without legal impediment, upon foreign citizens. This has caused some distress in Europe, particularly in Germany, with numerous articles relating the German attitude to surveillance to their experience of the Stasi during the period of the German Democratic Republic. Within the European Union, Germany is the country which the NSA spies upon most, collecting an average of 20 million phone connections and 10 million internet records each day. Angela Merkel’s Chief of Staff, Ronald Pofalla, advised the German people that, ‘The NSA and the British intelligence agency have assured us they uphold German law in Germany’, but this says nothing for the profusion of German data which travels to the systems of service providers based elsewhere.
Yet whilst the NSA engages in the mass surveillance of German citizens, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, the BND, has admitted to also using the XKeyscore programme since 2007. Cooperation between the BND and the NSA, with specific regard to the sharing of telephone data, has even brought the allegation of German complicity in US drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The broad scandal which has ensued is affecting Angela Merkel’s campaign for re-election, with polling set for September; in response, Merkel has attempted to share the blame for any BND wrongdoings with the opposition Social Democrats.
The picture in the UK is similarly murky, with the intelligence agency GCHQ – the Government Communications Headquarters, responsible for providing signals intelligence – partly funded by the NSA, and working towards its ends. The GCHQ endeavours to ‘exploit any phone, anywhere, any time’; admits privately to the deceptive nature of its work; and stresses as a ‘selling point’ the UK’s relative lack of privacy legislation. Indeed, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian – in the aftermath of the nine-hour detention at Heathrow Airport of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner – published on Monday a piece suggesting that prior restraint (otherwise known as pre-publication censorship), ‘near impossible in the US’, is an option being pursued by the UK government; and describing how two GCHQ officers oversaw the destruction of Guardian hard drives containing Snowden’s disclosures. The government reportedly warned Rusbridger that the Guardian would have to hand over the Snowden data or else face its destruction, telling him, ‘You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more’. Both the UK and the US governments have admitted being kept abreast of – though not authorising – Miranda’s detention; but the White House says it is ‘difficult to imagine’ the US government engaging in the destruction of hard drives.
The reality seems to be one where nation states use their ill-defined status as such, their existence within borders which they pledge to secure, to profess a concern for the rights of their own citizens – with the implicit extension being that the rights of the rest of the world barely count and can be summarily dismissed. This use and abuse of the concept of the nation state is one which is echoed when it comes to defence, armaments, and immigration. While professing outwardly a concern for their citizens, at least while they persist within their own borders, governments secretly bind themselves to one another in an endeavour to spy on the very same. So despite the FAA making it easier for the NSA to work round American law; despite programs like XKeyscore allowing NSA analysts to search American data on the thinnest of pretences; still what vestiges of the law remain and what oversight is carried out make it just as well for the NSA and the American government to obtain data on their own people from intelligence agencies overseas – from the British and the Germans, for instance, who can obtain and store as much US data as they please. These transactions work both ways, and extend across the globe; including to New Zealand, which has just passed a contested law bolstering domestic spying.
While Snowden has revealed the secret and duplicitous methods by which governments would erode the privacy of individuals, there is a correlate in the UK in David Cameron’s openly expressed plan to bolster the legislation concerning online pornography. Cameron announced last month – after a sustained ‘Block Online Porn’ campaign in the Daily Mail, begun in April 2012, and absurdly posturing as a ‘fightback for decency’ which would ‘protect Britain’s young from a vile and insidious social menace’ – a series of measures, meant to curtail the viewing of online pornography which he stated is ‘corroding childhood’. Alongside the establishment of a single secure database of illegal images of children – questionable in itself given the government’s record when it comes to overseeing data – and more powers for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, three key measures were highlighted. Internet service providers will be required to ask clients to ‘opt-in’ if they want access to online pornography, with all pornography filtered unless users actively choose to be able to receive it. The possession of ‘extreme pornography’, including pornography depicting rape, is to be made illegal. Lastly, ‘horrific’ search terms will be blacklisted, with service providers obliged to prevent these terms from producing any results.
Many have cited the difficulties in implementing such filters accurately, and without also preventing access to non-pornographic material; whilst Tumblr has offered a recent demonstration of the potential dangers that come with the excessive blocking of search terms. The criminalisation of the possession of ‘rape porn’ also appears difficult to justify. Professionally produced ‘rape porn’ involves consenting adults, and it may be difficult within the realm of pornography to always distinguish between it and types of BDSM. More, it is unclear how any ban would sit alongside some of the depictions of rape in mainstream movies and across other artistic endeavours. The argument that depictions of rape in pornography are solely or predominantly for titillation, demeaning for its practitioners and debasing the public, while other artistic depictions always treat the matter more conscientiously, seems a dubious argument at best, especially for a government that would seek to avoid nuanced understandings.
There is perhaps a case for a strong public debate on the effects and the availability of pornography. Evidence that the ready availability of internet pornography constitutes a ‘corroding’ influence appears so far slim and inconclusive. Any debate would have to consider a broad range of interconnected issues: historical attitudes and behaviours; the ready availability of professions which pay well and do not demean their practitioners; how pornography or the delimiting of pornography affects social relations and both sexually motivated and non-sexual acts of violence; and so on.
However, Cameron’s proposals have not come in the wake of any extensive or sensible debate. Ostensibly focusing on the safety of children, the proposals have been framed so as to shame any viewer of pornography – conflating separate issues and with confusing legislation outlines which seem to link child abuse or else child neglect with all viewing of porn, and which cast the users of porn as deviant. Rather than being presented as a fact of society which may be thoughtfully navigated, discussed, and used or not used, pornography has been cast as an infiltrator, an attack upon society, upon the body and the home: in his speech outlining the proposals, Cameron advertised filters as ‘One click to protect your whole home and to keep your children safe’ (incidentally, Cameron’s speech included nine variations on his patronising invocation, ‘let me be clear’). Far from suggesting balanced and concerned parenting, this seems a hands-off, detached approach. The insidious lack of clarity in the proposals has resulted in some assuming they’re going to be presented with this simple option: Do you or do you not want access to rape and child porn?
There is controversy over the precise nature of ‘opt-in’ or ‘default-on’. It has been argued that what internet service providers offer will not change at all, and that ‘default-on’ is nothing but ‘political sleight-of-hand’. Cameron’s proposals do not seem to indicate any new internet infrastructure, or any new technology which the government may use or misuse: the filter system which providers already utilise will remain in place; with the blocking of search terms remaining, for the moment, the provision of search engines like Google and Bing. The wider issues are the facile move to establish a public and political discourse in which the government dictates how people are to live; and the move to establish an open legal precedent for government meddling in internet activities. In contrast to the secretive and underhand work of the intelligence agencies, this is the second prong that would skewer privacy.
In News & Politics
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