"I want our party to reclaim that tradition."
Dear Ed.
Sadly, over the past decade, your party discarded its right to be mentioned in the same sentence as "civil liberties" unless those words were themselves preceded by the words "abuse of".
And New Labour's treatment of civil rights was not "casual" at all.
It became very clear that your party's treatment of civil rights was that they were at best an irrelevance and at worst a nuisance to be trampled over as the whims of government dictated.
Even after the election, leading NuLab authoritarians were speaking out in defence of ID cards and other such abuses.
And by speaking out on support for DNA in policing and the role of CCTV without also concentrating on the fact that both have been open to abuse and require greater public safeguards than your party has been prepared to countenance, you merely show that you yourself still haven't got it.
You want to "reclaim that tradition"?
Then your platform has to include as a minimum:
1) Remove from the DNA database all those people who are found innocent in court, or against whom no action is taken.
2) Stand up and publicly say that the ID card project was an attack on civil liberty, and that such projects within the Labour Party must not be tolerated - when you're in Government as well as in Opposition.
3) Start giving the ICO some real teeth against government departments that leak personal data, making named managers and ministers PERSONALLY liable for the loss.
4) Mandate a two-year period for all government departments to meet BS7799/ISO/IEC 27000, with automatic dismissal for the responsible managers and ministers if they fail.
5) Introduce proper legal sanction against officials who misuse personal data - "early retirement" is not a punishment.
6) Introduce legal sanction against superiors who fail to take action when personal data is misused or lost.
7) Mandate that all personal data held by government is accessible only against a specified business case, and get the system designs changed to enforce this.
8) Make a rule that the data of celebs and MPs must be held in the same systems as those of the public at large - that way you'll have some incentive to give the public's data some proper protection.
9) Add a system of damages so that when government data is lost, compromised or misused, you don't just sit there behind crown privilege going "tough".
10) Banning of biometric systems in children for trivial purposes, such as school libraries. These systems serve no real purpose except to "soften the children up" for universal biometrics later.
11) Institute actual disciplinary procedings against police officers who harrass photographers taking innocent pictures in public places.
12) Where a demonstration is scheduled or violence expected, CCTV cameras must be checked in advance to be working. And in event of violence, evidence from all publicly-owned CCTV cameras in the area is to be collected and safeguarded by the IPCC - and copies released both to the police and the lawysers of anyone subsequently bringing a claim against the police.
Do all of those - and heck, you're trying to be a government - why don't you actually try thinking up some protections for the public's data and rights for a change instead of just doing the "we take this very seriously" act - which most of the public now understand to mean "we will do bugger all unless we are forced".
Yes, do all of those, and more, and you might stand a chance of being able to pontificate about your party's place in civil liberties on some basis other than a sick joke.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
