ID

Nothing 2 hide

Anyone following the NO2ID campaign either as a member or supporter will both have grown used to, and been made weary by, comments by the confused such as “I've got nothing to hide”. This little mantra is trotted out as if it is the coup de grâce in the debate. It is, of course, nothing of the sort, it is meaningless. It is not an endorsement of ID cards and the supporting database.

The same people who trot out this remark would be justifiably horrified if their neighbours were sent copies of their health records. But of course this sort of thing 'never' happens. We can all sleep soundly while the state watches over us. Up to a point Lord Copper, up to a point!

For we now see that not only does the state lose our data if fails to protect it too.

all to have a number

We have the democratic deficit of: an unelected Prime Minister, unelected ministers who are Peers, an economy that is in a slow tailspin whilst business reacts negatively to the insecurity in government, failing institutions and rising unemployment.

In the meanwhile we have Alan Johnson as our new Home Secretary. He has voted strongly in favour of ID Cards and Labour's anti-terror laws and in an interview in the New Statesman he tells us that:

"I wasn't a Trot," he insists. "I was more CPGB [Communist Party of Great Britain]. I did consider myself to be a Marxist - I read more chapters of Das Kapital than Harold Wilson."

French UAV
Both the
Independent and the Daily Mail write about the proposal to employ drones to further impinge on our privacy and civil liberties. They imply that this is a cross party decision by the House of Commons Defence committee. However, that committee comprises 8 labour, 4 Tory and 2 Lib Dems so is not exactly unbiassed. We never think of these things unaided, naturally there is an EU. The European Union’s joint defence ministry has signed an agreement with a consortium of European defence contractors to develop a strategy for integrating unmanned aerial vehicles into European airspace by 2015.See here

Deutsche Welle tells us that in February:

[i]The European Commission agreed to a plan to collect fingerprints and photographs from foreigners entering the EU, part of an effort to fortify the bloc's borders. The plan, which was presented on Wednesday, Feb. 13, could see EU funds used to develop surveillance equipment like cameras, sensors and pilot-less drones.

Fine balance
Dr Bob Spink, UKIP's latest acquisition, voted in favour of the 42 day detention plan. Thus he voted with Nulabour and against his old party the Tories. His explanation for this was that -

"he had to consider his 8,000 constituents who work in London, the front line of the terrorist threat".

But when Spink left the Tories for UKIP it would seem this group of his constituents were not the main reason for the move. In fact it is hard to see how any of his constituents played a part in the process, as he was expelled from the Tory Party. Also Dr Spink said that, along with many other MPs of all parties, he would be -