The US Supreme Court has ruled that denying even serious ex-prisoners access to the internet is an egregious breach of their 1st amendment rights. They have struck down a North Carolina state law. Mike Masnick at Techdirt argues that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) § 512(i) will be next. (This is the law used by the legacy music industry to bully ISPs into kicking their customers off the internet as punishment for alleged piracy; and it is alleged as accusation is enough.) …
Digital Rights
I have been asked to write something on Digital Liberty/Rights and so have checked up on the EDRi Charter of 2014. This has been moved around in their site and so I have created a mirror of their white paper, the Charter of Digital Rights. …
Internal Affairs
One of Blair’s insights was that to appeal beyond Labour he had to be seen to oppose and master his Party. This is why he changed Clause IV and bowdlerised the policy development process. It may be seen in the future, that Jeremy Corbyn has done the same, by facing down the PLP. …
Social Media and the General Election
Some comments on Labour’s social media campaign during the general election.
Secrets
We need to thank Lord Buckethead, one of Theresa May’s opponents in her Maidenhead constituency who produced a manifesto consisting of a 15 point plan, seemingly compulsory these days. His promise on the Nuclear deterrent is hilarious.
…A firm public commitment to build the £100bn Trident renewal system together with an equally firm private commitment not to build it. They’re secret submarines, no-one would know. It’s a win win.
Crowds
It’s a shame the Party didn’t have a crowd sourced intelligence feedback feature. People across the country could record what they found. Maybe that was twitter. …
Micro-targeting
It seems the Tory submarine offensive, i.e. the secret social media advertising was spent on various anti-Corbyn attacks, which may of course lead them into problems if like some of the attacks on Dianne Abbott was based in lies about him. Their other problem, is that this isn’t what Obama (or the leave.eu campaign) did; they ran micro targeted messages and it maybe that the crude smear around Corbyn’s anti-nuclear power position helped in keeping Copeland but it could have been much worse although we don’t know it all yet. Remember Zac Goldsmith’s campaign statements about family jewelry and the garden tax smear must have come from somewhere. I had also assumed that the prominence of Labour’s plans to reverse the Tory’s inheritance tax giveaways came from this source. It wasn’t discovered by reading the Manifesto. …
Abstention
Sinn Fein MPs are flying to London, it is reported … to abstain in person? …
TWAT
The election and its results should make us all think about the fight against terrorism, and how a free society succeeds in this task and defends its freedoms and citizens.
…I regret the militarisation of the fight against terrorism, we need to defend our rights and freedoms and ensure that suspects are subject to the same rule of law as the rest of us. Their actions are criminal and the response should be appropriate in that light.
Confidence
Ian Smart, not always right, but on Scottish Politics more knowledgeable than me, in this article on his blog suggests that neither the SNP, nor the DUP will vote No, on a No-Confidence vote in Parliament. The SNP are frightened of a second election and the DUP are frightened of Corbyn led Government. …