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The events of last week involving the Guardian and its reporters have renewed debate and inflamed concern about the age-old dilemma of how to strike the balance between individual liberty and collective security. The coalition made freedom one of its founding principles back in 2010 and many people are looking to us now to prove we meant it.

Liberal Democrats believe government must tread the fine line between liberty and security very carefully, and are not easily persuaded by a government minister asserting: "Just trust me." So now that we are in government, we have been vigilant in ensuring the right decisions are made: scrutinising and challenging the assumptions of security experts, even as we give them our wholehearted support in their aim to keep the public safe.…  Seguir leyendo »

Polly Toynbee has launched a magnificent but spectacularly dangerous argument for mass surveillance across Britain (CCTV conspiracy mania is a very middle-class disorder, November 7). With sweeping brush-strokes she trashes concern over CCTV, DNA databases and identity cards as a middle class "righteous indignation" underpinned by a sinister and self-absorbed "moral blindness". For Ms Toynbee, the battle against "gross inequality" is the only game in town, and we middle-class conspiracy nuts are getting in the way of solving that problem.

"The world is a dangerous place," she argues. "A heating globe threatens drought, war and mass migration ... Terrorists may blow up proliferating nuclear power stations."…  Seguir leyendo »

I think I must have a chip missing. An operational fault makes me quite oblivious to the dangers of government agencies (excepting the NHS) abusing my personal information to trap me or tax me or otherwise attack my basic liberties. Just as I blithely assume that no one at London Transport is remotely interested in the details of every Tube journey registered on my Oyster card, so I fail to see that the Home Secretary, no matter how nasty I might be about him, will want to access my entry on the national register and write horrid things in it.

I just don’t think I’m that important.…  Seguir leyendo »

The world is a dangerous place. A heating globe threatens drought, war and mass migration. Terrorists may blow up proliferating nuclear power stations. Ministers are preparing for a 1918-style flu pandemic.So on a scale of threats to Our Way of Life, where would you place CCTV and speed cameras, electronic health records, DNA storage or ID cards that carry the same information as passports? Most people are not in a delirium of alarm about the Big Brother potential of any of these. Mori finds that about 80% of people support the idea of ID cards (though only 39% think the government will introduce them smoothly, which is another matter).…  Seguir leyendo »

By Henry Porter, the London editor of Vanity Fair (THE GUARDIAN, 03/11/06):

Up until now the best ally of governments and big corporations who wish to place every individual under total and unwavering surveillance has always been ignorance. People have simply failed to grasp the threat posed by individual surveillance systems and the way a range of technologies can reach out to each other almost of their own accord to create new pathways of exchange.But with the publication of three important reports this week - one in this newspaper about the NHS database - there can be no excuse for saying "I have done nothing wrong so I have nothing to fear".…  Seguir leyendo »

By Ben Macintyre (THE TIMES, 03/11/06):

IN THE EARLY 1880s one Alphonse Bertillon, a French policeman, came up with a revolutionary scientific idea for identifying criminals: Bertillon argued that certain physical characteristics — earlobes, the length of the left middle finger and so on — do not change over an adult lifetime, and no two adults could have the same measurements. By systematically recording these features on known criminals, the French criminologist declared, the police could develop a foolproof method for identifying crooks.

This system of anthropometry, or Bertillonage, was enthusiastically embraced by police forces throughout Europe and America. In 1884 Bertillon triumphantly identified 241 repeat offenders, several of whom were duly guillotined.…  Seguir leyendo »