A phone call to a loved one. An e-mail to a prospective employer. A confidential message to a support service. Under new Government proposals, every single communication you make will be monitored and stored. Every time you phone someone, a record will be made of who, when, and where. Every time you access a website, it’ll be recorded. Your entire private life on display to the government, your friendships, your beliefs, your troubles, and your lifestyle. Everything.

Rank Hypocrisy

Despite opposing similar plans whilst in opposition, the Coalition Government are bringing forward plans to legislate a requirement for ISPs and telecoms providers to monitor and store information on every communication you make, providing the government “real-time” access to your data without warrant. The policy also flies in the face of Tory and Lib Dem election promises, and the coalition agreement:

We will be strong in defence of freedom. The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness. We will implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion… We will introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation… We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason… – Section 3 “Civil Liberties”, Coalition Programme for Government

Technological Ignorance

Every week over 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook. Every day, over 290 billion emails are sent. Every hour over 1.3 million tweets go out on twitter. As the 8th most connected country in the world, interactions from UK citizens will represent a great deal of that content. With so much data being generated every second, storage costs alone would be astronomical. Then imagine that ISPs will be required to keep all that spam, too. Implementing this law would require widespread reworking of network infrastructure, and investment in provision and upkeep of servers that would make Google’s server costs look like nothing.

The Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) has already hit out at the government over this. But given the Government’s inability and unwillingness to listen in the Digital Economy Act debate, one would hardly be surprised if their concerns are brushed aside yet again.

War on right to privacy

If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide. Only criminals, paedophiles and terrorists should be afraid. That’s the line from Home Secretary, Theresa May, anyway. The Government’s spouting of the fallacy-filled trope is utterly wrong – turning every civilian into a suspect, with everywhere you go, and every connection you make up for government tracking, is nothing short of declaring war on privacy.

Civil Liberties groups have lined up to condemn the move, with Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group stating “The saga of complicity between senior police officers and Murdoch’s journalists should tell us how vulnerable people’s privacy can be. The government should stand by the commitments both parties made before the election to protect our privacy.”, whilst Big Brother Watch have said “It is remarkable that they wish to pry into everything we do online but seem intent on avoiding any public discussion.”

Fighting the proposals

Unfortunately the public don’t seem to like getting up in arms or taking direct action on issues devolved from what they see as “real life”, so your options here are a bit limited to liberal things like writing to your MP or signing a petition, which the Government will happily allow because it makes no impact as they ignore everything said, whilst liberals pat themselves on the back for trying. “At least we didn’t take direct action”, they’ll proudly cry, as this legislation passes.

A phone call to a loved one. An e-mail to a prospective employer. A confidential message to a support service. Under new Government proposals, every single communication you make will...

Today @PaulJChambers was found guilty of a criminal offence contrary to s127 Communications Act 2003, which makes it a strict liability (i.e. you’re guilty if you just did the act of it, regardless of circumstance) offence to make “”indecent, obscene or menacing” messages via a telecommunication network.

Originally he was charged under Criminal Law Act 1977 for a bomb hoax, however the CPS decided there wasn’t sufficient evidence for this, and instead opted for the rarely used s127.

But just what did Paul Chambers do? He tweeted a joke. A crap joke, but a joke all the same.

“Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”

For this, he now has a criminal record, and faces a £1000 fine.

Just to be clear, here, a British citizen is now a criminal for making a completely non-serious comment on twitter. This is yet another example of the ridiculous restrictions we have on freedom of speech in the UK, joining the growing list of heavy-handed offences such as Incitement, and the infamous Libel law; as well as yet another example of the erosion of our liberties under the authoritarian New Labour party.

Keep checking #twitterjoketrial for updates, and possible link to a whip-round to pay for his fee.

Today @PaulJChambers was found guilty of a criminal offence contrary to s127 Communications Act 2003, which makes it a strict liability (i.e. you’re guilty if you just did the act...

Today, a general election was declared. It was also the day that the human rights infringing, industry-drafted, protectionist Digital Economy Bill had its 2nd Reading in the commons, before being passed through the wholly undemocratic process of wash-up in the coming days.

The controversial bill would see the death of public wi-fi, houses being disconnected on allegation of copyright infringement – with them having to prove innocence by paying for an appeal after the fact, photographers and works creators having work taken and exploited by industry without consent, or as one MP put it (in an endorsement of the bill!) – “putting creativity before freedom” – despite the fact the bill mentions not once the content creator or artist, and instead refers only to the rights holders – most often record labels or publishers, not the artists who created the works.

Understandably there has been outrage over the bill itself, and the government’s insistence on passing it without true scrutiny and debate: Over 20,000 letters and e-mails to MPs, over 35,000 signatures on the Number 10 petition against the bill, 100,000s of tweets, campaigns against the bill from consumer groups, business groups, ISPs, the  public, and the Pirate Party; concerns from the JCHR and the Law Society of Scotland that the bill breaches human rights, one of the  most discussed topics on social media worldwide, even on the day of the declaration of the election.

Guess how many of our great ‘Representatives’ turned up to the debate today?

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Today, a general election was declared. It was also the day that the human rights infringing, industry-drafted, protectionist Digital Economy Bill had its 2nd Reading in the commons, before being...

Today (March 3rd), marked Day 2 of the House of Lords Report Stage on the Digital Economy Bill, a government bill which seeks to undermine due process by disconnecting the internet connections of those accused of copyright infringement, without trial; amongst other things. The bill has drawn wide criticism from all sectors of society, including the Pirate Party, Open Rights Group, the ISP Talk Talk, musicians and directors, and the public.

One section of the bill (known as #debill on twitter); the controversial clause 17 – which would have given untold power to the Secretary of State to amend copyright however he, or lobbyists, saw fit. – was today replaced by a Liberal Democrat amendment, Amendment 120a. Whilst it’s good that the original clause is gone, what we now face in its stead is possibly even more terrifying.

This new clause 17, tabled by Lord Clement-Jones, adds a new section to the Copyrights, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, and allows copyright holders to file an injunction requiring ISPs to restrict access to websites and services that allegedly infringe their copyright, or link to said alleged infringements. So now, rather than the usual “this video has been removed due to copyright claims by Mediacompany Inc.”, when you try to view your favourite video on youtube, you’ll find “This website has been blocked in its entirety due to unauthorised hosting of copyrighted material” So then, maybe you try to go to google to find an alternate link to it, right? Wrong. “”This website has been blocked in its entirety due to unauthorised linking to sites hosting copyrighted material.” – This new clause has the potential to ban every single person in the UK from accessing search engines, youtube, or even social networking sites like facebook or twitter, if copyright holders make an allegation of copyright infringement.

The Liberal Democrats compared such a system to the Internet Watch Foundation – a small group who blacklist alleged child porn websites. You may recall the controversy over them restricting access to wikipedia for millions of people a couple of years back. What they don’t seem to grasp is that not only are copyright infringement, and child pornography fundamentally different, but that policing the net based on allegations of copyright infringement is no better than the content restriction we see in countries like Iran and China.

With the addition of this new web censorship clause, the Digital Economy Bill continues to become a larger and larger threat to liberty, rights, the internet, and somewhat ironically the ‘Digital Economy’ itself. If it passes into legislation, we are putting so much at risk, and we can’t afford to let that happen. The Bill will be going to the commons soon, and I urge you all to write to your MP about the bill, to inform them of the issues and hopefully have them oppose the bill in parliament. You can also help by fighting the bill, and fighting for your rights, by joining both the Pirate Party, and the Open Rights Group. Pirate Party UK stands for the reform of copyright, and protecting your privacy and freedom of speech, and costs just £10 a year (£2 if you’re under 21) to join.

The amendment can be seen in full below:

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Today (March 3rd), marked Day 2 of the House of Lords Report Stage on the Digital Economy Bill, a government bill which seeks to undermine due process by disconnecting the...