Digital Liberty, Labour’s Policy?

Digital Liberty, Labour’s Policy?

I have today, posted a submission to Labour’s YourBritain site, arguing for the Labour Party to support the EDRi’s charter of digital rights. I repeat my categorisation of the charter as supporting citizenship activism, defending privacy from corporate and state surveillance, promoting equality before the law and seeking to ensure a democratically regulated internet. I suggest that this builds on two of the last Labour Government’s greatest democratic reforms, the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and the Human Rights Act (HRA). I conclude with the proposal that the Labour Party supports the Charter for the European Parliamentary elections and the general election in 2015.  …

A digital manifesto for Europe

A digital manifesto for Europe

Perhaps it really is the day we fight back, since the EDRi, the European umbrella digital liberty organisation has over the last couiple of days just launched its manifesto for the European Parliament elections. They have published their manifesto on a pseudo trading site where voters and politicians can pledge their votes and promises in public around the EDRi’s charter which consists of the following 10 points. …

The day we fight back

The day we fight back

I have just spent the evening at the London #Cryptoparty, called on #thedaywefightback. The night was originally planned as an ORG planned Cryptoparty, an un-seminar on how to use your computer and the internet safely and minimize your chances of being spied upon, but the campaign, “Don’t Spy On Us” has been launched by English Pen, the Open Rights Group, Liberty, Article 19, Privacy International and Big Brother Watch. The campaign watchword is their 1st principle, “No surveillance without suspicion”. …

Privacy and Big Data

I read Privacy and Big Data by Craig and Ludloff towards the end of 2013. The first chapter is called “The Perfect Storm”. The book lists a number of consumer and corporate computing trends, from Google’s search solution and their clustered file systems, the consumer adoption of cloud storage and the realisation of parallel computing models. There is no question that data is growing at an explosive rate and that new computational models are being developed to use these new volumes of data in timescales appropriate to the human. These new models are of interest to both the new internet companies and to Governments yet because of both social media and the distributed nature of modern computing raise questions of privacy. …

Don’t Dump on Deptford’s Heart

Don’t Dump on Deptford’s Heart

I went down to the Deptford Lounge to support comrades and soon to be neighbours in opposing turning Deptford High Street and Church Street into a building site for the next five years. Thames Water have asked for permission to use the green at St. Paul’s as their engineering support site for their plans to build the super-sewer. The national planning inspectorate had come to Deptford to take evidence. The first speaker was the local MP, Joan Ruddock and followed by Joe Dromey and Brenda Dacres who spoke on behalf of the local campaign group “Don’t Dump on Deptford’s Heart”.  …

pictfor: the European Debate

pictfor: the European Debate

The Parliamentary Internet Communications and Technology Forum held a meeting entitled “The Europe Debate” and headlined it by inviting Bill Cash MP, not some one who I’d identify as an expert on ICT nor on the European Union. The three speakers were Julian David of “tech UK“, Graham Hobbs and Bill Cash MP, Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee .  The key questions asked, were to be, Do UK technology companies benefit from EU membership? Is the Digital Single Market good for UK business? They also produced a Briefing Paper for delegates. …