We learn today that a computer was stolen from the constituency office of Hazel Blears (who looks to me like she’s permanently trying to suck the seeds out of a lemon). This in itself wouldn’t be big news as such, except for the fact we’re told that some classified Government papers were on them.
It is unclear at this stage whether or not Hazel Blears had employed any form of disk encryption, or had secured the documents in any meaningfully secure fashion. We’re told that the computer was password protected, by which I assume she’d bothered to set a password to log into, becasue we all know how hard it is to bypass that. There appears to be confusion as to whether this was her own personal machine or a government issued laptop that was stolen.
Within the last 10 months, there have been at least two other major incidents involving the Government losing sensitive information (Child benefit disks, Secret documents on the train – twice) within the last 10 months. It seems to indicate an apparent disregard for the nature of the information being held and a fundamental lack of understanding of the risks involved in its transport and storage. Back in the days of Station X (Breaking the Enigma), everyone understood the significance of the data being handled, and what it would mean if it were lost. It seems now that we have little or no idea of what data we have or how easily such things can go missing.
Do I expect anything to happen? No. We’ve seen it plenty of times before, a high level Civil Servant will get their wrists slapped and some low level Civil Servant will probably get the boot for sending her the documents without following procedure. There’ll be another review, and another new raft of data guardians appointed at great expense, no senior person will be held responsible. There’s speculation that Ms Blears may face action under the Official Secrets Act for failing to secure Government documents. What, if anything will happen on that front is anyone’s guess.
One would hope that the Government should at the very least be able to secure its own paperwork. If it can’t manage that, how can it expect us to have confidence in their assurances that everything else is going well?
B
Revisited after a re-read, tidied up to make a little more sense… hopefully
Yes, I know. I’ve gone from posting five times in as many months to posting three times in three days.
Speculation is mounting that voters in Ireland may have decided to vote No in the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. What this will mean for EU expansion remains to be seen. As I understand, all 27 EU members have to agree to its terms for it to proceed. Will the Irish Government listen to the voters and go back to the EU and say “sorry guys, let’s look at this again” or will they do what they did last time and tell the Irish public “er, sorry… could you vote again on this?”
I don’t quite know where I stand on this issue of the Lisbon Treaty. I’m sure the UK has benefited from closer cooperation with Europe, but on the other it seems like we’re drowning in EU legislation about all manner of things, even down to how much time we should spend working.
It seems that we’re handing over more and more power to this body in another country, one in which we’re increasingly marginalised in favour of the German-French bloc. The Lisbon Treaty hands over another large chunk of powers from Westminster to Brussels, we’re reassured however that we have our “red lines”, which give us opt-outs in key areas like defence and criminal justice. Whilst defence was never going to enter the equation, our criminal justice system is increasingly deferring to the European Courts and to European Laws. I do wonder if these “red lines” would work when tested.
We were told that when the EU Constitution was due to be voted on that we’d have a referendum on it, as it was a substantial change in our relationship to Europe. That fell by the wayside when the French and the Dutch voted “No”. The Lisbon Treaty we’re told though is completely different (it used different sized font and everything…). From what I’ve read, it doesn’t seem a whole lot different. What I wanted was to be treated like an adult, to be presented with the facts and allowed to make up my mind. I guess that doesn’t fit in with the Government’s apparent desire to turn us all into meek clients of the state.
David Davis News
Reaction to David Davis’ resignation yesterday appears to be mixed. Most of the commentators in Westminster are following the “Er… what the hell is he playing at? are the Tories divided?” line. The Public (Well, the ones the BBC seem to be able to find) are behind him and admire the man for making a stand on principle.
It seems also that the ex editor of The Sun (Kelvin Mackenzie) intends to stand against him in the event of Labour not fielding a candidate. He argues that locking up terrorists is no bad thing (which I’m pretty sure everyone would agree with). He seemingly misses the point that the powers granted to the Police won’t be used to lock up terrorists, they’ll be used to lock up terrorist suspects (as in, people the Police are investigating but don’t have enough evidence to charge with anything). Meaning potentially innocent people could be locked up for 6 weeks.
It’s sure to be an interesting few weeks as the debate unfolds. The Campaign team is already up and running, if you want to help (and are on Facebook), have a look at the Facebook Group Fight for Freedom – Support David Davis.
Yours,
B
Updated after Jon pointed out that the Banana rules were infact a gross mis-interpretation of what was in the document. I’ll do more research in future…
The media is in an absolute frenzy following the narrowness of the Government’s victory over 42 days. Many are describing it as a pyrrhic victory, that Brown has given so much away in order to win, he’d have been better off not trying.
During his monthly press conference, Brown sought to ridicule those who opposed the Anti-Terror bill as not understanding the threat faced by the country, the complexity of the evidence that needed to be processed and the determination of those who would do us harm.
I don’t claim to be an expert in International Terrorism and I am not privy to the intelligence gathered by the security services. I do however think that it’s ludicrous to try and beat this enemy we face by dismantling the legal protections that allow us our liberty. I find it repugnant that Government ministers claimed to be all knowing entities over the Conservatives, several of whom have faced the far more menacing spectre of Irish Terrorism back in the day. A point rammed home by David Cameron yesterday:
Increasingly in this country, we’re told that we face the very real threat from an enemy out to destroy our very way of life, an enemy who hate us for the freedoms we enjoy and the way in which we live our lives. Surely by extending detention without trial and allowing coroner’s inquests to be made secret on national security grounds (a rule which could have been applied in the de Menezes case) does the work of the terrorists for them? The country I fear is a lot further down the slippery slope and is sliding further down with each passing day. We learnt during The Troubles that we beat terrorists by not letting them get to us. We carry on, we taunt them by showing we’re not going to change our way of life to suit them.
David Davis (the Conservative standard bearer on the 42 day detention issue) resigned today in order to fight a by-election on the issue of 42 days. He intends to make a stand against the erosion of the liberties many have fought for over the years.
I had always viewed membership of this house as a noble endeavour, not least because we and our forebears have for centuries fiercely defended the fundamental freedoms of our citizens. Or we did, up until yesterday.
He went on to say:
And because the generic security arguments relied upon are ones that will never go away, this government will be tempted again in the future to try for 56 days, 70 days, 90 days.
But in truth 42 days is just one albeit perhaps the most salient example of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms under this Government.
I admire the stand he’s taking on this issue, but I fear that it may backfire. The Lords still haven’t voted on it and Davis was a formidable opponent to a whole raft of useless Home Secretaries. I fear that by resigning, he’s giving Labour the opportunity to paint a picture of discord within the Opposition. So rather than being able to focus their attention on getting the Lords to put this heinous bit of legislation down, the Conservatives will be fighting a rear-guard action, denying rumours of splits in the party line.
The UK Parliament votes in a few hours on new legislation to allow the Police to detain suspects in terrorist offences for longer than the currently allowed maximum of 28 days (the bill before Parliament gives provision for up to 42 days).
Various bits and pieces have been written about how this is necessary measure to protect national security, or how it is an unacceptable attack on civil liberties guaranteed since the Magna Carta.
I side on the latter, and I’ll detail here why. Firstly, it’s expected to work like this:
A Terrorist Outrage is committed on British soil. After a few days, suspects are arrested and questioned. So far so good. The days tick away until eventually…
Day 28
The Director of Public Prosecution has to decide if the Police have enough evidence to charge the suspect with the crime or order his release.
The decision is made, there isn’t enough evidence. The Police need more time and go to the Home Secretary to say “er, Guv… we need more time”. The Home Secretary goes to Parliament (within 2 days) and says “There’s been a Terrorist Outrage and the police need more time to question this bloke”
Parliament then has to vote whether or not they’re allowed to do so within 30 days of being told by the Home Secretary (with the image of body bags fresh in their minds). A Judge then decides whether or not the suspect can be held beyond 28 days. If the Police applied on Day 27 and Parliament couldn’t vote for two weeks, it makes no odds, the Police can hold them for an extra two weeks. The ability to hold people for an 42 days then remains active for 60 days until either Parliament quashes it (through the vote) or until the 60 days run out.
This therefore could mean that the poor sod locked up could have been released by the time Parliament has debated the measure. The safeguards are largely unworkable. The Government insists that this would only be used in the most extreme of extreme situations, that it’s an insurance policy so that if something were to happen, the Government doesn’t need to rush to Parliament to pass a law to hold suspects for longer, denying the terrorists the “Oxygen of publicity”…
Because as we know, having Parliament rush through new legislation will give terrorists more publicity than say a large bomb going off in central London. I can imagine the next terrorist meeting:
Osama: “Guys, since we won’t have the British Parliament passing laws in the event of an attack by us, it’s pointless for us to go after them, we’ll be deprived of the oxygen of publicity… I’m going to give up and take up needlework”
The argument about this being an insurance policy seems to me at least to be a spurious one. We could pass such “insurance policy” laws until the end of time and we’d still be none the wiser. To be on the safe side, I say we pass a law that says if aliens turn up; we should provide every citizen of the country with little flags to welcome them (feel free to suggest your own). I don’t see that Parliament could be given anything close to the time necessary to look at such an issue in any great degree of detail without prejudicing the trial.
Returning to the Civil Liberties aspect, we all have basic rights in this country . The Police can’t detain you just because they feel like it. You have the right to know why you’re being detained and have the right to be tried before your peers. To lock someone up for 6 weeks whilst you look for evidence of their guilt seems to run counter to the whole notion. If the Police find no evidence after 6 weeks, they turn you free and you find that no one of your friends will talk to you, no one will give you a job. Solution? “here, have £3000 for every day we held you over 28 days”.
Little comfort if you have to start your life over again.
The Government claim that the complexity of such cases requires the increase in days. Whilst this may be the case, why not give the Police more money to hire more people and buy better equipment? It seems to me that if you double the number of people working on a case, they’re going to get through the evidence more quickly.
It’s also claimed that various high-profile Police and Security Service officials want this power “just in case”. I wonder what other powers the Police would like “just in case”? The Security Services even took the unprecedented step of saying publically that it was indifferent to the proposals. Even the man responsible for bringing such cases in front of the Courts has said it isn’t necessary.
Word reaches us today that Brown is buying off rebels with promises to take a softer line on Cuba, to give more money to Miner’s compensation causes, not to mention apparent shady dealings in Northern Ireland. A poll today says that a 69% of the public support the detention of terrorist suspects for 42 days in an emergency. I’m pretty sure that you could also have asked “do you think terrorist suspects should be given the death penalty” would have had a similar outcome. All I need to tell you about opinion polls is that it is possible to get any answer you want by asking the right question, as this clip from “Yes Prime Minster” demonstrates:
I hope that this goes the right way, but sadly I fear that we’re on the slippery slope.
B
Updated – 22:16
315 votes in favour, 306 against. The Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland help Gordon Brown from a tight spot. There’s talk that they were bought off with promises about military base sell-offs. It’s a sad day. Now we’re left to watch The House of Lords kick this horrible afront to our hard won civil liberties and the rule of decent law back into the waiting lap of Dear Leader