Can the House of Lords stand up to the coming surveillance state in Britain? Investment advisor, op-ed columnist, bestselling author, and peer, Lord Rees-Mogg (formerly Sir William Rees-Mogg) is no stranger to arguing in favor of individual liberty against the state. In the late 1960s, as an editor of the Times, he wrote the famous "breaking a butterfly against the wheel" editorial as members of the Rolling Stones were prosecuted for drug possession. With no credible pro-liberty opposition party in Parliament, the House of Lords may be all that Britons have left:
Many of these new interventions could partly be justified in terms of counter-terrorism, but they still invaded the liberties of the citizen. For instance, Britain has four million CCTV cameras, which gives the UK a quarter of the world’s cameras to photograph 1 per cent of the world’s population. Phone taps are now going to be extended, for the first time, to MPs; and therefore to their constituents. There are universal taps on the internet, which may be passed on to foreign intelligence agencies. All of these new powers can give counter-terrorism benefits, but they can also be used for intrusions not connected with terrorism, or even with crime.Tomorrow the House of Lords will return to the worrying Bill that authorises identity cards. Many people suppose that identity cards are an anti-terrorist measure; the security services know that they are not effective in that role. The main question tomorrow will be their cost. The Government used to pretend they would cost £100 each; the London School of Economics estimates that the cost will be £500 a head, or £28 billion in all. I worry more about the central register than I do about the cards themselves. This will be held on a supercomputer that will contain more than 50 pieces of information about each cardholder, including biometric information. This could easily develop, as some people think it should, into a collected register of information held by government departments, including criminal, tax and health records. I certainly don’t want to be compelled to spend £500 to give the Government a complete picture of my private existence.
In Parliament, particularly in the House of Lords, there is a growing reaction against such social control. Most of us think policemen should not be turned into busybodies, warning people not even to discuss adoption by homosexual couples; arresting them for any trivial offence; threatening smokers and publicans; and galloping after fox-hunters. We resent this on behalf of the public, but we also resent it on behalf of the police.
That last point is pretty significant. Just as with the military or any other otherwise-legitimate function of government, if the police -- in Britain or anywhere else -- are put to contemptible tasks, soon we'll be left with nothing but contemptible police. We're on the way there, and it looks like we're in a race with the Brits.
UPDATE: Peter Briffa doesn't, perhaps, expect salvation from his political "leaders:"
Tuesday, January 10Alice Thomson analyses all the bright young things from all our major parties who are, in the not too distant future, going to make our lives such fun:
"They are moderate and decent. Most of the members of these sets are young family men (usually called David, Ed or Nick), who are happy changing nappies and taking their children to swimming classes. They wear jeans rather than ties, listen to their iPods as they cycle to work and have working wives who are violinists, play in bands or are fashion designers.
Their heroes are Bob Geldof and Richard Curtis as well as Nye Bevan and Winston Churchill. They are all well educated, with beautiful manners, and are always articulate".In other words, they are scum.
Awesome.
UPDATE: As passed on by Brian Doherty at Hit&Run, the House of Lords swatted back Britain's national ID card legislation. As I understand it, legislation is not dead just because the House of Lords sends it back to Commons or the Cabinet or what have you...but, let's let Matthew Tempest of The Guardian Unlimited give us the head's up:
The government tonight suffered a damaging blow in its bid to introduce identity cards, with the Lords voting to force ministers into revealing the complete projected costs of the scheme before it can become law.
Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers, backed by at least some Labour ones, inflicted a 237 to 156 defeat on the government over the measure, a majority of 81.Although peers have admitted they cannot defeat the government bill in full, since it was a government manifesto commitment, insisting on the publication of the of all detailed costings will further exacerbate the row over the cards.
Cool.
Shami Chakrabati, director of Liberty, the civil liberties pressure group, said today: "This bill is as expensive to our rights and freedom as to our wallets."Posted by Craig Ceely at January 17, 2006 10:50 AM