Snooper's Charter: 19,000 Emails Against, 0 In Favour

This topic was created by Patrick Seurre .

[Patrick Seurre]

Snooper's Charter: 19,000 Emails Against, 0 In Favour

http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/uk-snoopers-charter-19000-emails-against-0-in-favour/index.htm

From the article:

'The Joint Parliamentary Committee makes a comparison to an earlier campaign against a proposed bill, the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, and comments:

The distinction is that while in the case of that Bill opinion was fairly evenly divided, we have not seen a single email supporting the draft Communications Data Bill, or even agreeing that there may be a case for the security services and law enforcement agencies having greater access to communications data than they do at present.

Got that? Out of 19,000 emails received by the Committee on the subject of the proposed Draft Communications Bill, not a single one was in favour of it, or even agreed with its premise. Has there ever been a bill so universally rejected by the public in a consultation? Clearly, it must be thrown out completely.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Snooper's Charter: 19,000 Emails Against, 0 In Favour

That result is a bit problematic, especially the "0 in favour" part. No matter what the subject it seems very unlikely that no-one would be in favour.

If I were involved on the government side I would take note of the fact that, as the blog says

"38 Degrees and Open Rights Group (ORG) provided suggested texts and asked people to contact the Joint Parliamentary Committee that has been considering the Bill".

I would presume that most of the 19,000 e-mails against the proposal were essentially just copies of a few distinct views, only sent in by followers of the organisations that prompted them to respond.

I would conclude that the consultation was flawed in that the general public was obviously unaware of it and re-run it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funnily enough ...

Just 6 days after I posted the above I came across a report into the consultation into 'Presumed Consent' organ donation in Wales -

Wales Organ Donation Consultation

The report notes "In total, there were around 2,900 responses to the consultation, the majority of which were identical letters opposing the proposals.. This and other reports then focus almost exclusively on the results of previous surveys which indicated a more acceptable public view.

If you're going to encourage people to get involved in a consultation, then it is self-defeating to provide them with the lines to use.

[Ubermik]

Its a bit unfair to criticise "limited" voting by people only directed by one side of the argument really when our entire political machine ONLY counts the votes of MPs that are actually in the "in da house" which has on many occasions seen votes on issues rushed through when it was known a lot of the opposition wouldn't be available and where same party opposers were asked (read told) to not be present rather than vote against a bill or abstain

Objectively though I would find it hard to believe that even in the current climate of choreographed media brainwashing that many people would support a bill like this and that the majority of votes in favour of such a bill would be from government employees to be perfectly honest

The idea that a lowly council working rent collector working on a counter and practically every other government employee would have access to all of your electronically stored data INCLUDING medical records, banking details, emails and texts is something that only a Nazi style draconian government WOULD welcome with open arms

For the citizens itself even the severely lobotomised or the Jeremy kyle viewers would be unlikely to see it as a good thing