Labouralism

Posted on 27th May 2010 by G W

It says a lot about the modern Labour party that the New Statesman are welcoming the wholesale repeal – by a Conservative-led government – of Labour’s authoritarian measures including the National Identity Register, ‘intercept modernisation’ and DNA profile retention. Their own cheerleaders, lamenting how a supposedly social democratic party brazenly and wholeheartedly abandoned any commitment to individual liberties, and shows no signs of recognising its abandonment of liberal principles.

New Statesman – Leader: Labour must once more become the party of liberalism
There are dissident, decentralising strands in Labour thinking, and it is time these were rediscovered.
The first Queen’s Speech of this new government promises to light the bonfire of New Labour’s authoritarian vanities. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s pledge to “restore freedoms and civil liberties through the abolition of identity cards and repeal of unnecessary laws” is not only to be welcomed, but sets a challenge to the half- dozen candidates who would be Labour’s next leader.
The centrepiece of this attempt to repair some of the damage wreaked by the legislative mania of Labour in power is the Freedom (or “Great Repeal”) Bill. This will begin to dismantle the “database state” that historians will judge the most disastrous legacy, other than the Iraq war, of the New Labour years. It is right to abandon the ID card scheme, the National Identity Register and the ContactPoint database. There is not, and never was (not even when the anti-terrorist emergency was at its most pressing), any plausible, principled argument for placing such constraints on individual liberty.

There are dissident, decentralising strands in Labour thinking, and it is time these were rediscovered.The first Queen’s Speech of this new government promises to light the bonfire of New Labour’s authoritarian vanities. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s pledge to “restore freedoms and civil liberties through the abolition of identity cards and repeal of unnecessary laws” is not only to be welcomed, but sets a challenge to the half- dozen candidates who would be Labour’s next leader.
The centrepiece of this attempt to repair some of the damage wreaked by the legislative mania of Labour in power is the Freedom (or “Great Repeal”) Bill. This will begin to dismantle the “database state” that historians will judge the most disastrous legacy, other than the Iraq war, of the New Labour years. It is right to abandon the ID card scheme, the National Identity Register and the ContactPoint database. There is not, and never was (not even when the anti-terrorist emergency was at its most pressing), any plausible, principled argument for placing such constraints on individual liberty.

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Posted on 6th May 2010 by G W

SW embed test

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Election fluff word list

Posted on 6th April 2010 by G W
I’ve had a running joke with some of my friends over the past week by answering unrelated questions in Electionspeak. So, with a few additions pulled from news stories, here’s the list of political soundbites that I’ve been tormenting them with, and which you will be sick of hearing from now until 6th May.
None of them mean anything at all.
  • Fairness
  • Change
  • Accountability
  • Justice
  • Openness
  • Compassion
  • Choice
  • Sustainability
  • Equality
  • Engagement
  • “Hope, Optimism and Change”
  • “The great ignored”
  • Champions
  • “Road to recovery”, also ”Path to prosperity”, c.f. “Road to ruin”
  • “Putting the economic recovery at risk”, c.f. “Securing the economic recovery”
  • “Clear and straightforward”
  • “Fresh start”
  • “British values”
  • “Old politics”
  • anything “in a globalised world”
  • European partners
  • Transparency
  • Waste
  • Efficiency
  • anything “for all”
  • Westminster culture
  • “more with less”
  • “Brussels bureaucrats”
  • “sleaze/bonus/waste/entitlement/benefits/entrepreneurial culture”
  • “building a culture of change”.
  • “Honest, hard-working people”/”hard-working British families”
  • “fairness and real change”
  • Greedy/immoral bankers
  • “Fresh start”
  • “Big society”

UPDATE:

Some additions courtesy of my loyal blog reader(s), friends and countrymen:

  • Broken politics (Chuffy)
  • Britishness (Chuffy)
  • Tough questions (Susan)
  • Broken Britain (Susan)
  • Traditional values in a modern context (generic Blairism)
  • Community (can’t believe I forgot this one but remembered it in the pub)

The best of Tom’s list (with an SNP slant ;) ):

  • Reform
  • Greener economy
  • Broken Society
  • Keys to Downing Street
  • Class war (not so sure this is relevant to this election: aren’t we all aspiring middle class types?)
  • Values
  • Separatist
  • Two-horse race – c.f. “not a two-horse race” from Nick Clegg
  • “Alex Salmond can’t become Prime Minister”
  • “break up Britain”/”Tear up the Union” (does it merit the capitalisation of a proper noun?)
  • SNP “obsessed with independence”. Possibly also “wasting taxpayers’ money on a consultation exercise/referendum bill”
  • Minority viewpoint
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What hath god wrought?

Posted on 17th March 2010 by G W

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.‘

– J. Robert Oppenheimer, on first using Chatroulette*

Oh, Chatroulette. Never have so many people stared so awkwardly.

But there’s this!

I just wish I could meet/intern for Shirtless Bird-face Donkey Man, but sadly he’s just the subject of a perfectly observed sketch:

And bands are secretly releasing albums on it!

It’s been covered to death my the media in the last month or so, including the Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

And by the New York Times:

The growth could signal a nascent desire for anonymity online. Our lives used to be private by default, yet with the advent of each new social network, privacy has become increasingly difficult to preserve. Every status update or photo we share online becomes an indelible tattoo of where we’ve been and who we’ve been with.

And the awfully cute Molly from Rocketboom:

Look how surprised her chat partners look to see an actual GIRL online!

So what have we learned?

Well, it’s this:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a large number of lonely people masturbating in public **

* not really
** with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke

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Commission and ECJ: please intervene. Italy has flipped.

Posted on 24th February 2010 by G W

Oscar Magi, the Italian judge presiding over the Google YouTube privacy/defamation liability case. Picture copyright Luca Bruno/Associated Press. Taken from The Guardian - click to view article.

– UPDATE Thursday 25th November, 23:25UTC:

Lilian Edwards has put together a really comprehensive analysis of the verdict on her blog. See also her prior post about it back in December.

Original post follows.

Wow.

Gosh, this is bad news.

Three of four Google employees on trial for defamation and violations of Italy’s privacy code, in reference to a video uploaded by a third-party to YouTube and subsequently taken down by Google after a takedown request, have been found guilty today by a court in Milan. They were absolved of the defamation charges but found guilty of privacy violations, and given six-month suspended sentences.

I haven’t been following this case in any detail, but what I can glean from the result seems more than a little out of step with the thrust of the E-Commerce Directive, given that they did not film, upload, or review the video, and acted to remove the content within a few hours of a police report (so presumably “expeditiously”).

But we are deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason. It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming. European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence.

That’s taken from Google’s reaction on their blog.

This case has been ongoing for some time. There is analysis at Ars Technica and a somewhat contrary opinion at ZDnet blogs.

There is also good a BBC News report containing a video statement from a Google representative, who appears visibly shocked and emotional at the result. There is also coverage at The Guardian. And more for those who understand Italian at La Stampa and Corriere della Sera.

According to TechDirt, YouTube now receives 20 hours of video uploads every minute. It’s therefore worth noting that the Italian government have recently proposed making the approval of the Communications Ministry a prerequisite to uploading video onto the Web as part of their amendments to media law (presumably AVMS implementation?). A central part of Google’s argument in the case was the impracticality of such pre-approval/screening.

I hope the Commission go to town on Italy for failure to implement the E-Commerce directive’s safeguards.

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